- Airtable node documentation | n8n Docs
- Operation = “Create”
- using the existing functionality… “webhooks”, this problem can be solved
The idea/problem is:
Airtable requires the ATTACHMENT column to be an Array and n8n simply shows the field as text. this is a problem requiring MUCH end user effort just to handle attachments. To simplify lets also assume the “On form submission” trigger was used with a Form Element of type “File” used. This can be set to only allow a single file or multiple files. to further simplify lets say it only accepts 1 file at the moment. Airtable API wants a URL for the file along with the other metadata. This results in one having to use solutions like S3 buckets or google drive to temporarily upload files just to make them publicly accessible and to get a valid URL, just to temporarily to post to Airtable and write the file.
One then has to clean it up, after successfully posting, and delete the file. This is very painful and not very n8n friendly… the node could and should be able to take the file(s) from {{ $json['your file field name'] }} and host them on some temporary URL using {{ $execution.resumeUrl }} to host the images for the posting avoiding all this unnecessary end user configuration. in this way n8n already has the filename, mimetype, size and binary data for each image. this would change the attach the “Attachments” field in the Airtable node to no longer accept text but have it require an object. like [Object: {"filename": "168.jpg", "mimetype": "image/jpeg", "size": 12268}] and in this way one or more files can be sent along.
The fix is applicable to other nodes in similar situations.
My use case:
use case was described above.
I think it would be beneficial to add this because:
self evident given why n8n exists - to make hard things simple
Any resources to support this?
Are you willing to work on this?
I’ll help test and document it