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Updated 2 months ago

Airtable fieldname versus field ID

At a glance

The community member has a field called "Name" in Airtable, but is concerned that renaming it later will break the connection with Webstudio. They tried using the field ID instead, but it didn't work. The community members discuss that it's generally better to use field IDs over field names, as names can change. Some suggest duplicating the field, maintaining changes on both, and then dropping the old field once the transition is complete. Another community member mentions that in Webstudio, the expression sometimes shows the field ID instead of the name, which can appear as "gibberish" to users. Finally, a community member confirms that it is possible to bind expressions by field ID in Airtable, and provides a link to the relevant documentation.

Useful resources
Right now I have a field in Airtable called Name. But if I rename that later, it's going to break the connection with Webstudio. I tried placing the field ID in there instead fldi9VKxKWO7AOy6n, but didn't work.

Makes sense to prefer field IDs over names, right?
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17 comments
Must be a nightmare tbh
What we code-devs do to rename column is duplicate it, maintain changes on both and rewrite client. Once all is fixed we drop old column.
Same with variables in webstudio. If you copy the expression and paste into text field you see the name is actuall an id. And sometimes users see it as gibberish
Though it's easy to rename
In case of css variables we decided to rely on original name
So renaming would be harder to implement from our point of view
I see that duplicating the column and transitioning makes sense to do it securely.

If I understand correctly, it's not possible to bind the expression by field ID, right?
Should be possible. I think John did it in his videos.
Maybe need to enable this somewhere in airtable?
Okay! Let's ask @John Siciliano
He will be here a week later πŸ™‚
Ohh haha! Hope he's having some nice time off then haha.
Not too urgent, mainly curiousity
I'll see if I can find it in any of the videos
I remember seeing it in baserow video for sure
Yes this is possible in Airtable @Ronald from 360Creators Use this param https://airtable.com/developers/web/api/get-record#query-returnfieldsbyfieldid

It makes setting up more annoying because you have to figure out the internal ID of each field but overall its WAY more stable so definitely worth it
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