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How to view Airtable data in RAD Studio Data Explorer using the CData ODBC Driver for Airtable.
Embarcadero RAD Studio provides a development environment for Delphi and C++Builder applications. With the CData ODBC Driver for Airtable, you gain access to live Airtable data within RAD Studio, abstracting the data into tables, views, and stored procedures that can be used to both retrieve and update Airtable data. This article will walk through connecting to Airtable using the Data Explorer.
Configure a Connection to Airtable
If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.
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.
Connecting to Airtable Data Using Data Explorer
You can create a simple application for displaying Airtable data by utilizing the CData FireDAC Components for Airtable and a new VCL Forms Application:
- Open the Data Explorer in RAD Studio and expand FireDAC.
- Right-click the ODBC Data Source node in the Data Explorer.
- Click Add New Connection.
- Enter a name for the connection.
- In the FireDAC Connection Editor that appears, set the DataSource property to the name of the ODBC DSN for Airtable.
- Back in the Data Explorer, expand the tables for the connection.
Create a new VCL Forms application and drag a table (for example: SampleTable_1) onto the form.
- Select the SampleTable_1Table object on the form and set the Active property to true.
Right-click on the object, bind visually, and link everything (*) to a new control (TStringGrid).
Arrange the TStringGrid on the form and run the application to see the SampleTable_1 data.
Related Articles
Below you can find other articles for using the CData ODBC Driver with RAD Studio, Delphi, and C++ Builder.