Connect to Airtable Data and Transfer Data in Talend

This article shows how you can easily integrate the CData JDBC driver for Airtable into your workflow in Talend. This article uses the CData JDBC Driver for Airtable to transfer Airtable data in a job flow in Talend.

Connect to Airtable in Talend as a JDBC Data Source

You can follow the procedure below to establish a JDBC connection to Airtable:

1. Add a new database connection to Airtable data: To add a new connection, expand the Metadata node, right-click the Db Connections node, and then click Create Connection.
2. In the resulting wizard, enter a name for the connection.

3. On the next page, select Generic JDBC from the DB Type menu and enter the JDBC URL.

   APIKey, BaseId and TableNames parameters are required to connect to Airtable. ViewNames is an optional parameter where views of the tables may be specified.

   • APIKey : API Key of your account. To obtain this value, after logging in go to Account. In API section click Generate API key.
   • BaseId : Id of your base. To obtain this value, it is in the same section as the APIKey. Click on Airtable API, or navigate to https://airtable.com/api and select a base. In the introduction section you can find "The ID of this base is appxxN2ftedc0nEG7."
   • TableNames : A comma separated list of table names for the selected base. These are the same names of tables as found in the UI.
   • ViewNames : A comma separated list of views in the format of (table.view) names. These are the same names of the views as found in the UI.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

   For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Airtable JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.airtable.jar

   Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

   A typical JDBC URL is below:

   jdbc:airtable:APIKey=keymz3adb53RqsU;BaseId=appxxN2fe34r3rjdG7;TableNames=Table1,...;ViewNames=Table1.View1,...;
4. Enter the path to the cdata.jdbc.airtable.jar file, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
5. Right-click the connection and then click Retrieve Schema.
6. Click Next with the default options to select the tables you want to import.
7. Finish the wizard with the default options.

Output the SampleTable_1 Table to a Flat File

You can follow the procedure below to transfer the SampleTable_1 table to a flat file output component:

1. In the Table Schemas node, drag the tables to the workspace.
2. In the dialog that is displayed, select the tJDBCInput component.
3. Next, drag a tFileOutputDelimited component from the Business Intelligence tab of the Palette into the workspace.
4. Right-click the SampleTable_1 tJDBCInput component and drag a vector to the output file.

Run the project to transfer the data.