Airtable Reader

Note

This adapter is in preview and is available on Striim Developer only. See Striim Developer for more information.

Airtable is a cloud-based collaboration and database platform that combines the simplicity of a spreadsheet with the power of a relational database. It is widely used for project management, content planning, CRM, and workflow automation. The Airtable Reader connects to the Airtable platform and reads supported objects.

Feature summary

Feature		Supported?	Notes
Objects	Standard objects	✓
Objects	Custom objects	✓
Authentication	Basic authentication		Username and password
	OAuth authentication	✓	Manual configuration based
	Custom authentication methods		Not all methods may be supported
Operations	Automated mode	✓
	Initial load	✓
	Pull-based incremental load	✓
	Push-based incremental load
	Automated pipeline
Governance	Connection profile
	Sherlock AI
	Sentinel AI
Schema handling	Initial schema creation	✓	Works with supported targets
Schema handling	Schema evolution
Setup	Wizard template
	Flow Designer	✓
	Striim TQL	✓
Runtime	Resilience/recovery	✓
	Parallel execution
	Metrics	✓	Standard metrics

Supported authentication method

The Airtable Reader supports OAuth authentication. Before you can authenticate via OAuth, you need to register an app in Airtable's developer portal. This registration process generates your OAuth credentials (such as a client ID and client secret) that are required for OAuth authentication flows.

To create an OAuth application and obtain credentials:

Log in to your user account.
Navigate to the OAuth app creation page.
Choose Register an OAuth integration.
Give the OAuth application a descriptive name.
Specify a callback URL, which can be any localhost URL (such as http://localhost:33333), in the OAuth redirect URL field.
Under Scopes, specify the following scopes:
Under Developer details, you can optionally specify a Client secret. While not required, generating a client secret can enhance security.
Copy and save the Client ID and, if generated, the Client secret from the Developer details section. You will use these later in the OAuth Client ID and OAuth Client Secret connection properties in Striim.
Click Save changes.

After registering your app, you can use the credentials to initiate the OAuth flow and obtain an access token.

To obtain your personal access token:

Log in to your user account.
Navigate to the token creation page.
Choose Create new token.
Under Scopes, click Add a scope to add each of the following:
- data.records:read
- data.records:write
- schema.bases:read
Under Access, add all the workspaces and bases that you want the token to have access to.
Click Create token to generate the token. Copy and save the generated token, as it will only be shown once.

Supported objects

The following are the supported objects for reading from Airtable:

SampleTable
SampleTable_Attachments
SampleTable_Collaborators

Airtable Reader properties

Property	Type	Default value	Notes
Access token	Password		The access token for connecting using OAuth. The OAuth access token is retrieved from the OAuth server as part of the authentication process. It has a server-dependent timeout and can be reused between requests.
Base ID	String		ID of the base. This property is not required when Airtable's Metadata API is enabled, but specifying it restricts the metadata that will be retrieved.
Base name	String		The schema to use - which corresponds to the name of the Base in Airtable. This property is only used when Airtable's Metadata API is enabled.
Display object IDs	Boolean		Boolean determining if schema, table, view and column names should be replaced by their corresponding internal ID. If this property and Airtable's Metadata API is also enabled, the description for tables, views and columns will include their corresponding display name.
OAuth Client ID	String		The client ID assigned when you register your application with an OAuth authorization server.
OAuth Client Secret	Password		The client secret assigned when you register your application with an OAuth authorization server.
Use simple names	Boolean		Boolean determining if simple names should be used for tables and columns. Airtable tables and columns can use special characters in names that are normally not allowed in standard databases. This property makes the Reader easier to use with traditional database tools.
Connection pool size	Integer	20	Specifies the maximum number of active connections.
Exclude tables	String		A list of tables excluded from read operations. Typically used to create a list of exceptions when the Tables property includes wildcards. Misconfiguration of the Tables and Exclude Tables properties can cause "Invalid table names" errors.
Incremental load marker	String		The incremental load marker is a unique incremental column in each object used for incremental load. When no marker is specified, tables are resynced at each polling interval. Specify the name of the column that contains the start position value. This column must meet the following criteria: It should have an integer or timestamp data type (for example, a creation timestamp or an employee ID). The values must be unique and continuously increasing to ensure proper incremental reading.
Migrate schema	Boolean	False	Only available in Initial Load or Automated mode. Set to `True` to enable initial schema migration, which propagates the object schema from the source to the target.
Mode	Select list: Automated mode Initial load Incremental load	Automated	Automated mode applies incremental updates to objects that support incremental load and performs full resyncs for objects that do not support incremental load.
Polling interval	Integer	5m	Specifies an interval as an integer followed by a unit. Supported units are days (`d`), hours (`h`), minutes (`m`), or seconds (`s`). The reader polls the source at the specified interval.
Start Position	String	%=-1	Value of the incremental load marker that defines the initial reading position.
Tables	String		A semicolon-delimited (;) list of objects to read from the source. Supports the `%` wildcard. Misconfiguration of the Tables and Exclude Tables properties can cause "Invalid table names" errors. Do not modify this property when recovery is enabled for the application.
Thread pool count	Integer	10	The number of parallel running threads. The default value of zero specifies single-threaded operation. When the value of the thread pool counter is higher than the connection pool size, large data ingestion operations can cause the app to halt. Since best performance is achieved when using one thread for each table being synced, increasing the size of the connection pool to match the number of threads in use is a performance best practice.