Airtable

Airtable is a spreadsheet-database hybrid. Note that because val.town uses Deno, we use an unofficial library.

Setup

On the homepage, click Start from scratch to create a base:

If prompted with automatic setup, click Skip. You should get a new base with a blank table.

Adjust the table fields as you want (note that this isn’t covered by this guide).

Click on your profile icon, then on Developer hub:

Click Create new token.

Fill out the fields:

• Name: Any. For example, valtown.
• Scopes: You’ll most likely want to add data.records:read and data.records:write.
• Access: Add the base you created earlier.

Lastly, click Create token. Here’s an example of how your settings could probably look like:

Copy your token and click Done.

Go to val.town, click on your username and then on Env Variables:

Click New env variable. Set the key to a name you want to use to reference the token (for example, airtable_pat) and paste the copied personal access token into the value, then click Add.

You can then use Airtable from val.town like so:

import process from "node:process";

export const airtable_deno_sample = (async () => {
  const { Airtable } = await import(
    "https://deno.land/x/airtable@v1.1.1/mod.ts"
  );
  const airtable = new Airtable({
    apiKey: process.env.airtable_pat,
    baseId: "appXSrKDlwbAijRmD",
    tableName: "All content",
  });
  // Sample data from: https://blog.airtable.com/database-vs-spreadsheet/
  const results = await airtable.select();
  return results;
})();

Run in Val Town

Make sure to change:

• apiKey if you have used a different name for your environment variable.
• baseId to the ID of your base. You can find it in the URL bar while a table is open and it will likely start with app:

• tableName to either the name of your table or the table ID which can also be found in the URL after the base ID (see above).