Using Airtable to Write Data (instead of just read)

denali.tietjen · 2020-05-25T17:50:44.548Z

Hello! I’m building our company’s site using Bubble and need to make some major data structuring decisions right now.

I’d like to use Airtable as our primary data source and already have the plugin set up, but I’ve found that when setting up pages on Bubble, the content type is limited to data stored in Bubble. This becomes problematic when sending data between pages (ie I have a search bar on our home page to choose a class category which then sends you to a search results page. I want it to auto-filter to that category either by sending data or through a URL parameter).

Is there a way to either:

Set page content to Airtable hosted data types?
Use Airtable to auto-write/edit Bubble data? That way, we can use Bubble data to configure the front-end but only touch Airtable data on backend?

Would really love any help here!!

sharma.himanshu0608 · 2020-05-25T20:19:05.133Z

Just curious, why not use Bubble’s database? It is quite flexible. Although data can be read/written from an Airtable base, it is limited in functionality.

denali.tietjen · 2020-05-29T20:23:45.592Z

Hi @sharma.himanshu0608! The reason I was using Airtable because 1) data relationships go both ways (ie if a class is associated with a teacher, it also shows on teacher page) and 2) I have integrated Airtable with other tools to ingest data from across the internet (for example, any time one of our instructors posts an event on eventbrite, we auto-add it to our database). Because there aren’t integrations with Bubble’s database, I struggled to keep it updated without manually adding each event or uploading new CSVs throughout the day. However, calling Airtable for each search result is too slow and won’t scale.

patty · 2020-08-13T02:27:13.261Z

I’m having the same problem! Would love to hear if anyone has found a solution.

ALB · 2020-08-15T17:36:09.211Z

Hey @denali.tietjen, I don’t think it’s an issue setting the Type of Content to an Airtable table now. You should be good to go with the latest official Airtable plugin.