Learning Airtable

Chapter 3. Linked Records and the Lookup Field

We’ve seen some of the advantages of using Airtable to keep our data structured. We can define fields in Airtable; each record is a distinct item in that table. The next step is linking records, which creates relationships between tables. More specifically, we create relationships between different items in our database, where every table represents a single type of item. The Linked record field allows us to associate items in one table with items in another table. Suppose we are using Airtable to manage the inventory of our grocery store. There might be a table of the orders we place with the different wholesalers that supply our inventory. In this Orders table, we could start with a Single select field, which tracks which wholesaler fulfills that order. In that case, we could select the appropriate wholesaler from the drop-down menu. But what if we also wanted to see more info about the wholesaler itself?

We could have a few extra fields for the wholesaler’s information in the Orders table, like its address and phone number. But if that information were living in just the Orders table, we’d have to copy and paste that information several times—every time we choose the wholesaler for the order. To solve this problem, we can use linked records to create relationships between the records in each table.

The orders and the wholesalers could each be in separate tables, as shown in Figure 3-1.

Figure 3-1. Arranging two different things, ...