Airtable Public View Exporter

Extract all rows from any Airtable public shared view as .json files - no API key needed.

How It Works

The script uses Playwright to load the Airtable share page in a headless browser, then calls Airtable's internal readSharedViewData API from within the browser context. This inherits the page's cookies and session state, bypassing authentication entirely. The API returns all rows in a single response (no pagination), which are parsed, mapped to column names, and saved as JSON.

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/DevArtsLab/airtable-export.git && \
cd airtable-export && \
./setup.sh && node export.js "https://airtable.com/appXXX/shrXXX/tblXXX"

git clone https://github.com/DevArtsLab/airtable-export.git && \
cd airtable-export && \
./setup.sh && node export.js \
"https://airtable.com/appY2AUgdy9lc9OMv/shrlWl6r0hH2Chwg4/tblujOarxTX3dVl77" \
"https://airtable.com/appGeQemouVNAWX5W/shr7WKb521dLfZTWO/tblZczCm470MGzRIK"

Output is saved to objects/<org-abbr>-<full-title>.json.

Example with real URLs:

node export.js \
"https://airtable.com/appY2AUgdy9lc9OMv/shrlWl6r0hH2Chwg4/tblujOarxTX3dVl77" \
"https://airtable.com/appGeQemouVNAWX5W/shr7WKb521dLfZTWO/tblZczCm470MGzRIK"

Usage

node export.js [--merge] [--output <dir>] <url1> [url2] ...

• --merge - Append only new records to existing output (by _id)
• --output <dir> - Write JSON to a custom directory (default: ./objects)

See CHANGELOG.md for the full list of features and recent updates.

Features

• No API key required
• All rows at once (no pagination)
• Retry logic (3 attempts)
• Multiple URLs in one run
• Auto-named output files
• Select field resolution
• Native type preservation
• Rich text flattening
• Merge mode for incremental updates
• Custom output directory
• Source origin metadata
• Progress logging
• Per-source field exclusion via orgs.json
• Collapsed output objects to single lines

Git Submodule

Use this repo as a submodule in other projects to export Airtable data directly into the parent repo:

git submodule add <this-repo-url> airtable-export && \
cd airtable-export && ./setup.sh && cd .. && \
node airtable-export/export.js --output ./data "https://airtable.com/appXXX/shrXXX/tblXXX"

Output

Files are written to the objects/ directory:

objects/
  ctd-employer-partners-apprentice-facing.json
  ctd-job-listings-public.json

Filenames are derived from the Airtable page title (all segments slugged with dashes) prefixed by the org abbreviation from orgs.json. The config maps Airtable app IDs to org info. Example: page title "Airtable - Employer Partners - Apprentice Facing" with org CTD produces ctd-employer-partners-apprentice-facing.json.

Each JSON file contains a _meta block with source origin info, followed by a records array.

Files

File	Purpose
export.js	Main script - accepts share URLs as CLI args
setup.sh	One-command install (npm + playwright)
skill.md	Detailed playbook for agents on how the method works
CHANGELOG.md	Version history and feature updates
package.json	Dependency declaration (Playwright)
orgs.json	Maps Airtable app IDs to org name, abbreviation, and excluded fields
objects/	Exported JSON files (git-tracked)

Requirements

• Node.js 18+
• Playwright Chromium browser (auto-installed via npx playwright install chromium)