Using the CData ODBC Driver for Airtable in PyCharm

The CData ODBC Drivers can be used in any environment that supports loading an ODBC Driver. In this tutorial we will explore using the CData ODBC Driver for Airtable from within PyCharm. Included are steps for adding the CData ODBC Driver as a data source, as well as basic PyCharm code to query the data source and display results.

To begin, this tutorial will assume that you have already installed the CData ODBC Driver for Airtable as well as PyCharm.

Add Pyodbc to the Project

Follow the steps below to add the pyodbc module to your project.

1. Click File -> Settings to open the project settings window.
2. Click Project Interpreter from the Project: YourProjectName menu.
3. To add pyodbc, click the + button and enter pyodbc.
4. Click Install Package to install pyodbc.

Connect to Airtable

You can now connect with an ODBC connection string or a DSN. See the Getting Started section in the CData driver documentation for a guide to creating a DSN on your OS.

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.

Below is the syntax for a DSN:

[CData Airtable Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Airtable
Description = My Description
APIKey = keymz3adb53RqsU
BaseId = appxxN2fe34r3rjdG7
TableNames = Table1,...
ViewNames = Table1.View1,...

Execute SQL to Airtable

Instantiate a Cursor and use the execute method of the Cursor class to execute any SQL statement.

import pyodbc

cnxn = pyodbc.connect('DRIVER={CData ODBC Driver for Airtable};APIKey = keymz3adb53RqsU;BaseId = appxxN2fe34r3rjdG7;TableNames = Table1,...;ViewNames = Table1.View1,...;')
cursor = cnxn.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT Id, Column1 FROM SampleTable_1 WHERE Column2 = 'SomeValue'")
rows = cursor.fetchall()
for row in rows:
 print(row.Id, row.Column1)

After connecting to Airtable in PyCharm using the CData ODBC Driver, you will be able to build Python apps with access to Airtable data as if it were a standard database. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback regarding this tutorial, please contact us at [email protected].