How To Import Data From Airtable To Firebase Firestore in 5 Minutes (2022)

More than 300,000 companies use Airtable on a daily basis to automate their workflows. But when you need to handle more than 50,000 rows or develop advanced workflows, Airtable users hit some serious limitations and it’s time to grow beyond the spreadsheet interface.

Using the Airtable API to directly interact with Firestore alleniates you from your non-technical teammates though. At Rowy, we are building a Firebase CMS that gives you the best of both worlds: a familiar spreadsheet user interface, but the power of code when you sporadically need it. In this article, we show you how to import Airtable data directly in your Firebase instance and how to manage it without code. Let’s row 🚣

Create A New Rowy Table

First, follow the installation guide or use the Deploy shortcut to let Rowy guide you. It takes 5 minutes to connect your Firestore database, set up authentication, and get started.

Then, create a new Firestore collection by adding a new table:

At this point you have an empty table without any data nor columns―it's perfectly fine! Next step.

Import To Firestore From Airtable

Now, that's where things become interesting. Just click the Import data button and pick the Airtable option like so:

As you can see, you only need two pieces of information to move from Airtable to Firebase: your Airtable URL corresponding to the spreadsheet you want to import, and an Airtable API key we will use to perform the import. We don't store any of your data, especially your API key, so go right ahead. Your Airtable rows are stored in Firebase and we only provide a nice way to interact with the database.

1. Get your Airtable URL

You only need to navigate to the table you wish to import from Airtable to find your URL. Copy / paste it and voilà.

2. Get your Airtable API Key

Then, check out your Account settings, still in Airtable, and get a read-only API key:

3. Pick columns to import

Rowy will now ask you what data you want to import and how you want to map it in terms of data types:

Rowy will set default types for each column if you prefer doing this later. No big deal!

4. That’s it!

And here we are! Your data is now ready to use from Firestore, and you still get a beautiful spreadsheet to edit it any time you wish:

Note that you can re-import your Airtable data any time you wish to sync it. Don't worry about updating or deleting rows in Firebase, you can always get back in time with Rowy.

Processing Airtable Data With Firestore

Rowy makes it easy to develop custom workflows from your Airtable data the low-code way, powered by Firebase Cloud Functions: just create a new column and use the Derivative type to create a derivative column. A derivative column derives its value from other columns. For example, if you want to upload images stored in Airtable to Firebase Storage, you can create a derivative column that will perform the upload and display the final link:

const derivative:Derivative = async ({ row, ref, db, storage, auth }) => {
    // store Airtable image to Google Storage
    const file = await rowy.storage.upload.url(row.assets[0].url)

    // store Google Storage link in ich you want to take the snapshot is playing.Firestore property
    return [file]
}