Airtable MySQL Integration: 2 Easy Methods

If you consider your data in Airtable absolutely vital to run your business, then you should create backups to protect your business. While Airtable maintains redundant backups on its data centers,  there are many reasons you would need to store a copy of your data locally or in a cloud-based data store. Whether it’s your client contacts, billing records, financial reports, inventory, or appointments, it is always nice and reassuring to have a backup copy of your data outside of Airtable.

In this post, we’ll look at Airtable and MySQL and why they are important, explain how you can set up an Airtable MySQL Integration, the limitations of the method you will use to achieve this, and finally, you’ll be introduced to an easier alternative.

Understanding Airtable

Airtable is an awesome and easy-to-use database, that behaves mostly as you’d expect a SQL system to behave, only with a graphical interface. You can use Airtable for a plethora of use cases. The main use of Airtable is storing and correlating structured data. This is because Airtable makes it extremely easy to input, edit and maintain rows in datasets in a format that can be used for a variety of purposes.

Airtable makes querying data as simple as filtering, grouping, and sorting information so that you can have a View of exactly the data that you want to see organized in the way you want to visualize it. The Airtable View doesn’t have any query language filtering in it. Instead, it hides the fields (columns) that you don’t want to see to achieve the same result. In other words, a View in Airtable is essentially just a saved query that is built using a graphical interface.

Airtable combines everything that you love about Excel and Google Sheets and modernizes it. You can integrate Airtable with a large variety of other apps including Asana, Google Calendar, Google Sheets, Outlook Calendar, and as you will soon see, MySQL.

Understanding MySQL

MySQL is a relational database management system based that is based on the Structured Query Language. It has found applications in Data Warehousing, e-Commerce, Customer Relationship Management Systems, Content Management Systems, and much more. The most common use for MySQL however, is as a web database. It is used by many web applications, including Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress.

Methods for Setting up Airtable MySQL Integration

You will learn about different methods to set up an Airtable MySQL Integration: 

• Method 1: Setting up Airtable MySQL Integration Manually
• Method 2: Using Hevo for Airtable MySQL Integration

Method 1: Setting up Airtable MySQL Integration Manually

If you’d like to export your current Airtable records in MySQL, you can export data from Airtable as CSV files and then import these files in MySQL. The export to CSV function is a great way to backup your data outside of Airtable and into MySQL for BI analytics or just simply for offline access.

To do this:

Step 1: Export data from your Airtable base in CSV format

1. In your Airtable base, select the view you want to export.
2. Click the three-dot menu next to the view name.
3. Click Download CSV.

4. A CSV file of your table view will automatically export to your files (the file will be located in your device’s default download location).

5. Repeat the process for each table in your base.

Step 2: Import the CSV files in MySQL

Here is how you do this:

1. Create a table in MySQL using the same schema as your CSV file. For example:

CREATE TABLE 'customers' (userId INT);
ALTER TABLE customers ADD COLUMN name VARCHAR(256);
ALTER TABLE customers ADD COLUMN email VARCHAR(256);
ALTER TABLE customers ADD COLUMN location VARCHAR(256);

2. Load data into your table

LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE  
'c:/temp/some-file.csv'
INTO TABLE your_awesome_table  
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' 
ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY 'n'
IGNORE 1 ROWS
(field_1,field_2 ,field_3);

Because we’re loading the file  from a local directory, we are doing this:

LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE

Since you are most likely going to export more than one field, MySQL will skip the last field. That’s why we’ve explicitly referenced all fields.

LINES TERMINATED BY 'n'
(field_1,field_2 ,field_3);

Lastly, because the CSV file we’ve exported from Airtable has the first row as the title for your fields, we’ve included this line:

IGNORE 1 ROWS

Here is a real-life example:

LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE  
'/home/susan/customers.csv'
INTO TABLE customers  
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' 
ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY 'n'
IGNORE 1 ROWS
(userId,name,email,location);

Limitations of Manual Airtable MySQL Integration

Keep in mind the following limitations before setting up Airtable MySQL Integration manually:

• Each table in your Airtable base (workspace) will need to be exported in a separate CSV file. 
• Exports do not include comments, app content, or base and field descriptions.
• If you want to export attachments, then you have to use a third-party tool.
• This solution doesn’t allow you to export the entire base at once.
• You can only export 15,000 rows. If you have more rows than that then you have to split the table into multiple CSV files.

Method 2: Using Hevo for Airtable MySQL Integration

As you’ve seen, exporting one CSV at a time for Airtable Views is not an elegant solution. If you’re looking to export data out of Airtable constantly, another option would be to set up an Airtable MySQL integration that could periodically fetch all your data and save it. This would involve developing an advanced program.

Luckily, we’ve built a tool that allows you to stream data generated from an Airtable view into MySQL. Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline helps you directly transfer data from multiple sources(among 100+ sources) to MySQL or a destination of your choice in a completely hassle-free & automated manner. Hevo is fully managed and completely automates the process of not only loading data from your desired source but also enriching the data and transforming it into an analysis-ready form without having to write a single line of code. Its fault-tolerant architecture ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.

It provides a consistent & reliable solution to manage data in real-time and always have analysis-ready data in your desired destination. It allows you to focus on key business needs and perform insightful analysis using various BI tools such as Power BI, Tableau, etc. 

Check Out What Makes Hevo Amazing:

• Secure: Hevo has a fault-tolerant architecture that ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.
• Schema Management: Hevo takes away the tedious task of schema management & automatically detects schema of incoming data and maps it to the destination schema.
• Minimal Learning: Hevo, with its simple and interactive UI, is extremely simple for new customers to work on and perform operations.
• Hevo Is Built To Scale: As the number of sources and the volume of your data grows, Hevo scales horizontally, handling millions of records per minute with very little latency.
• Incremental Data Load: Hevo allows the transfer of data that has been modified in real-time. This ensures efficient utilization of bandwidth on both ends.
• Live Support: The Hevo team is available round the clock to extend exceptional support to its customers through chat, email, and support calls.
• Live Monitoring: Hevo allows you to monitor the data flow and check where your data is at a particular point in time.

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Conclusion

You have learned how to export tables from Airtable in CSV format and import them into MySQL tables using LOAD DATA LOCAL. With this technique, you can safely integrate data from Airtable with your MySQL DB.

While this process allows you to move Airtable data to MySQL, it’s extremely time-consuming and it doesn’t support exporting attachments. To make things easier for you Hevo comes into the picture.

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 Hevo is a No-code Data Pipeline and has awesome 150+ pre-built integrations that you can choose from. Hevo can help you integrate your data from numerous sources and load them into a destination to analyze real-time data with a BI tool such as Tableau. It will make your life easier and data migration hassle-free. It is user-friendly, reliable, and secure. Check out the pricing details here.

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