[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built developer tooling for the Airtable ...
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Show HN: I built developer tooling for the Airtable API that I
needed
As a software engineer, I've experienced firsthand the challenges
of working with the Airtable API. As more non-technical users
began using the platform in our growing business, the need for
engineering to automate processes and sync data into Airtable grew.
However, keeping track of process failures and ensuring that no
unresolved failures slipped by was difficult and required
significant effort. That's why I created Airwalker, a toolkit that
improves the reliability of processes using the Airtable API and
helps you correct issues quickly and with minimal effort. Here are
some of the features Airwalker offers: * Base schema timeline *
Request/response logging * Edit & replay * Custom automatically
maintained TypeScript types Airwalker is free to use right now,
and I welcome any feedback or suggestions.
Author : goksan
Score : 62 points
Date : 2023-03-28 12:54 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (airwalker.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (airwalker.io)
| yawnxyz wrote:
| Oh this is nice! I've written my own wrapper "Airfetch" around it
| to just... work, but it's so dirty I can't actually share it (ha)
| but it works super well, and I use Airtable for everything.
|
| Thanks so much for sharing this!
| goksan wrote:
| Hah we both had the idea of prefixing it with Air
|
| Thank you for sharing, feel free to reach out if I can help
| out.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| I am glad to see an example of a better-built API which has
| pricing terms attached. For someone working in a corporate
| setting who needs a great off-the-shelf API to get an integration
| working ASAP, it seems to be just at the threshold of needing a
| purchase order to get it.
|
| For 'goksan, I'm curious what kind of research you did on the
| customer base for this, and how you thought through pricing? It
| _feels_ attractive to me, but curious if there 's more rigor
| involved there.
| goksan wrote:
| Hey, thanks for commenting.
|
| The API still a subset of the Airtable API for the moment to
| avoid requiring rewrites of existing integrations. I do plan to
| expand the API in the future to enable novel features.
|
| Most of my research is in talking to other engineers using
| Airtable, admittedly none used Airtable as widely as we did at
| my last job.
|
| I want to deliver the best possible experience for Airtable API
| integrations, and I believe pricing in the speculated range is
| necessary to sustain that focus. It's something I'm still
| thinking about.
|
| Moving out of Airtable and replicating all of it's goodies is a
| tricky and expensive task, I'd like to help customers avoid
| that where possible, or delay it at the very least.
| lblackwood wrote:
| Love the idea! Have experienced some of the pain points of
| working with Airtable myself. Keep building :)
| lucasverra wrote:
| Airtable is great for end users and internal tooling
| goksan wrote:
| A name that I couldn't forget!
|
| Hope everything is going great out there :)
| mmcclure wrote:
| I've been using Airtable to run Demuxed (decently sized video
| conference for people that work in video[1]) since ~2016 and my
| interest is definitely piqued. We do talk submission, anonymized
| selection processes, reviews, sponsor management, everything.
| We've built some custom UIs around things like the talk review
| process and the API is workable, but things like types would have
| been a god send.
|
| I was a little taken aback when I went to sign up for the free
| trial and got hit by a Stripe checkout, though. Yes, checkout was
| for PS0.00, but still, it was enough to make me close the tab at
| that point. This project is interesting but probably still a long
| shot for our workflows, so that (admittedly fairly low) barrier
| was a blocker.
|
| Best of luck!
|
| [1] https://2022.demuxed.com (last year's conference site)
| goksan wrote:
| Interesting to hear how you're using Airtable, thanks for
| sharing.
|
| Happy to talk more about your workflows if you'd like, but I
| appreciate you might already be able to tell whether Airwalker
| would be a fit or not.
| austinhutch wrote:
| My biggest gripes with the Airtable API for a small project that
| has a couple of tables with > 100 rows were around pagination and
| joining the data between the tables which was super slow.
| scottfr wrote:
| My company has an Airtable competitor that has API support for
| SQL. It has pretty good SQL capabilities solving the issues
| with pagination you have in Airtable.
|
| An overview of the supported SQL syntax is here:
|
| https://blaze.today/datablaze/docs/bsql/
|
| No joins yet between tables yet, but they are planned. (You can
| use lookup fields to achieve them to some extent, but that
| requires planning ahead and is limited).
| goksan wrote:
| Thanks for sharing
| goksan wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, I've heard similar gripes before. Airwalker
| doesn't do anything to ease that pain yet, one for
| consideration
| omneity wrote:
| Congrats for shipping!
|
| I tried to open your Terms and Privacy Policy pages but both are
| spitting a 400 error after timing out.
| goksan wrote:
| Thanks so much for letting me know about this.
|
| I'm not able to reproduce this currently, maybe it's fine on
| your end now too?
| omneity wrote:
| Indeed, it works fine now. I'm curious, what did you use to
| build your website?
| goksan wrote:
| It's built using Go and html/template from the standard
| library.
|
| For interactivity I wrote some custom JS, I think it's
| similar to libraries like https://htmx.org or
| https://turbo.hotwired.dev, this stuff is inside the
| application though.
|
| Let me know if there's anything you were particularly
| interested in knowing.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Airtable is amazing to use as a kind of combination of a Database
| and product Admin panel.
|
| The API is indeed a little bit clunky, but it works fine.
|
| I've had to write my own Airtable handler (e.g.: API response
| schema validation and type translation) codes for all my projects
| where I've used it, maybe this could actually be a great unified
| solution.
|
| Edit: The Superinverse logo is nice.
| goksan wrote:
| Hey, thanks for sharing
|
| I've also thought about additional an additional layer of
| validation & type transformation, one for roadmap.
|
| I like the Superinverse logo too!
| miekewrites wrote:
| This is pretty cool, thanks for sharing
| goksan wrote:
| Thanks for the kinds words :)
| adictator wrote:
| [dead]
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