Airtable 2 firebase synchronisation micro-service

Airtable2Firebase is a node.js synchronisation script that read Airtable data and save it to firebase in a way that can be easily requested by a front end.

The development is in progress, so be patient or help us to develop it !

Key features (developement in progress)

• a configuration file that define which airtable tables to import from which base
• a configuration file to define firebase project and credential to use
• import options
  • If the record exist in firebase / Does to update data from airtable at reimport ?
  • ...
• The script will use airtable records ids to prevent creating duplicates in firebase
• the script will use node js micro service architecture using a starter like https://github.com/ph0bos/express-microservice-starter

Why Airtable + Firebase

Because airtable is a great ui, user friendly app to enter the data, and start to bootstrap a product without technicall overhead Whereas firebase is great for performance and to prevent spending time in common backend functionnality.

What is airtable

Airtable is a mix between spreadheet and a relation database, with user friendlyness as first design objective. https://airtable.com/

Why Airtable API is not enough to serve an app

Airtable is great as a user friendly CMS like backend. It has an api but :

• this api is not purposed to serve apps with lot's of traffi (limited to 5 query / seconds)
• Also the stucture of the data especially the related tables are not very useful to display related information, without performing a new query.
• The query syntax is limited...
• It is not possible to set access right to limit access to the data. So this authentication part need to be performed by a backend somewhere.

What is firebase

Firebase is an PAAS product adding commonly used features like real time database, cloud messaging, authentication.. to prevent developers to lose time reinventing wheel. https://firebase.google.com

Why Firebase is great

It is simple, a simple json tree

For exemple the list of users is accessible at users A unique user with id 21 users/21 ....

It has a authentication system attached to the data

Each part of the json tree can be tested for authentication This authentication is called "rules" in firebase.

Changes are visible in real time

Thanks to a web sockets like technology, changes are "pushed" to the frontend in real time allowing to get changes in real time. Great for messaging, collaborative, meetings apps !