3 ms·

For a lot of simple apps I write now I just use Airtable as the database with some caching to avoid rate limiting. It works great even at scale.

chiefalchemist 8y ago
I susoect that's where the growth is / will be. Care to share a repo or two on anything you've done using AT? tia
- abhiyerra 8y ago
  Last year we used Airtable with 60 volunteers working concurrently on the site updating a Base to collect and organize information to help the Sonoma County fire victims. The Rails code is a very light wrapper on Airtable and if I were to do it again I would just write a Sinatra / NodeJS interface. (I didn't know JS at the time) We had about 130000 page views all backed by Airtable as the DB. Specifically: https://github.com/chimera/sonomafireinfo.org/blob/gh-pages/FireResponse/config/initializers/airtable.rb https://github.com/chimera/sonomafireinfo.org/blob/gh-pages/... Also working on a MTurk interface for Airtable (A Big WIP): https://github.com/workmachine/workmachine https://github.com/workmachine/workmachine
  - cpeterso 8y ago
    If the volunteers are using a Rails app to access the Base, who is accessing the Base directly in Airtable? Was Airtable just a convenient data backend to get the Rails app up quickly?
    - abhiyerra 8y ago
      Sorry, they were using the base directly on airtable. The rails app was just a thin layer to hide the apikey and cache the data so we weren't hammering Airtable directly.
      - cpeterso 8y ago
        That makes sense. I see how Airtable's user permissions (Owner, Creator, Editor, Commenter, Read-only) allow someone to quickly create a useful CRUD app that is safer than letting people randomly edit a Google Spreadsheet. :)
samstave 8y ago
Have a simple quick write up on this? Or a good resource to point to? I haven't used AT, but I have a pretty urgent new need to use it, and need to quickly ramp up on how I can build against it. I just created an account today.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

I susoect that's where the growth is / will be. Care to share a repo or two on anything you've done using AT? tia

abhiyerra 8y ago
Last year we used Airtable with 60 volunteers working concurrently on the site updating a Base to collect and organize information to help the Sonoma County fire victims. The Rails code is a very light wrapper on Airtable and if I were to do it again I would just write a Sinatra / NodeJS interface. (I didn't know JS at the time) We had about 130000 page views all backed by Airtable as the DB. Specifically: https://github.com/chimera/sonomafireinfo.org/blob/gh-pages/FireResponse/config/initializers/airtable.rb https://github.com/chimera/sonomafireinfo.org/blob/gh-pages/... Also working on a MTurk interface for Airtable (A Big WIP): https://github.com/workmachine/workmachine https://github.com/workmachine/workmachine
- cpeterso 8y ago
  If the volunteers are using a Rails app to access the Base, who is accessing the Base directly in Airtable? Was Airtable just a convenient data backend to get the Rails app up quickly?
  - abhiyerra 8y ago
    Sorry, they were using the base directly on airtable. The rails app was just a thin layer to hide the apikey and cache the data so we weren't hammering Airtable directly.
    - cpeterso 8y ago
      That makes sense. I see how Airtable's user permissions (Owner, Creator, Editor, Commenter, Read-only) allow someone to quickly create a useful CRUD app that is safer than letting people randomly edit a Google Spreadsheet. :)

samstave 8y ago

Have a simple quick write up on this? Or a good resource to point to? I haven't used AT, but I have a pretty urgent new need to use it, and need to quickly ramp up on how I can build against it. I just created an account today.