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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/airtable-cloud-filemaker-pro.rst

⇱ Connect to Airtable Data from Filemaker Pro (Mac)

Connect to Airtable Data from Filemaker Pro (Mac)

👁 Mohsin Turki
Mohsin Turki
Technical Marketing Engineer
Use CData Connect AI to connect to and query live Airtable data from Filemaker Pro on Mac.

FileMaker Pro is a cross-platform relational database application that allows users to visually modify a database. When paired with CData Connect AI, FileMaker Pro gets access to live Airtable data. This article demonstrates how to connect to Airtable using Connect AI and query Airtable data in FileMaker Pro.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL Server interface for Airtable, allowing you to query data from Airtable without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Airtable, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested Airtable data quickly.

Configure Airtable Connectivity for FileMaker Pro

Connectivity to Airtable from FileMaker Pro is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Airtable data from FileMaker Pro, we start by creating and configuring a Airtable connection.

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Airtable" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Airtable.

    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.
    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Airtable Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
  2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
  4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Airtable data from Filemaker Pro.

Connect to Airtable from FileMaker Pro using Connect AI

To establish a connection from FileMaker Pro to the CData Connect AI Virtual SQL Server API, follow these steps.

Configure the ODBC Connection to CData Connect AI

  1. Download and install the Actual ODBC Driver for SQL Server (actualtech.com)
  2. Configure a DSN for the Actual ODBC driver by setting the following properties:
    • URL: tds.cdata.com
    • Port: Change the port from 1433 to 14333
    • Username: Your Connect AI email address
    • Password: the PAT you created earlier

Query Airtable from FileMaker Pro

  1. In the SQL Query Builder "SELECT" tab, select the columns to include as part of the query. 👁 Configuring the query by selecting columns.
  2. Open the "WHERE" tab of the SQL Query Builder and select "Show only selected columns."
  3. In "Table.Column,"" select a table and a column name.
  4. Set the "Operator" to =.
  5. Select "Column," and then select the same table and column name as "Table.Column."
  6. Click "Insert into SQL Query." 👁 Configuring the query by setting the WHERE clause.
  7. If no other modifications to the SQL query are required, click "Execute."

Get CData Connect AI

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