using_airtable.js

Sync product and related information from Akeneo into Airtable

This code example can be used to update or insert ("upsert") a list of products and their associated information hierarchy (categories, families, etc.) from Akeneo, a Product Information Management (PIM) solution, account into their own tables in Airtable. This can help you organize your products, their categories, and additional metadata. You can schedule this script to run on a recurring schedule to keep your Airtable base "in sync" with Akeneo.

This code uses Axios to interact with Akeneo's REST API and Airtable.js to upsert records in Airtable.

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The software made available from this repository is not supported by Formagrid Inc (Airtable) or part of the Airtable Service. It is made available on an "as is" basis and provided without express or implied warranties of any kind.

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Local setup

1. Clone/unzip code
2. Copy .env.example to .env and populate values
   • Explanations of each environment variable are available below
   • Use this sample base which has the Product, Categories, Families, and Attributes tables (and fields) setup for you.
3. Install Node dependencies using npm install
4. (Optional) Modify the list of attributes mapped from items returned from Akeneo into objects sent to Airtable in the helpers/formatObjects.js file
5. Run npm run sync to run index.js

Key files and their contents

• index.js is the main code file and is executed when npm run sync is run. At a high level, it performs the following:
  • Loads dependencies and configuration variables
  • For each different level of data (such as products, categories, families, and attributes; represented as ___ in the explanation below):
    • Defines an array all___AsItems which is populated with all items of that type retrieved from the appropriate Akeneo REST API GET endpoint
    • Defines another array all___AsFields which is populated with the mapping of Akeneo item objects (which can be highly nested and have more information than you may want to populate into Airtable) into an object that the Airtable API can accept
    • Upserts the contents of all___AsFields into the respective Airtable table using the PATCH version of the Airtable update multiple records API
• .env.example is an example file template to follow for your own .env file. The environment variables expected are:
  • AIRTABLE_API_KEY - your Airtable API personal access token with the data.records:write scope and access to the base below
  • AIRTABLE_BASE_ID - the ID of your base; you can find this on the base's API docs from https://airtable.com/api. This will always start with app
  • AIRTABLE_PRODUCTS_TABLE_ID_OR_NAME, AIRTABLE_CATEGORIES_TABLE_ID_OR_NAME, AIRTABLE_FAMILIES_TABLE_ID_OR_NAME, AIRTABLE_ATTRIBUTES_TABLE_ID_OR_NAME - the table ID (recommended) or name of the respective table in Airtable; these tables must already exist
  • AKENEO_BASE_URL - the base URL for your Akeneo PIM instance, such as "https://tested-with.trial.akeneo.cloud/"
  • AKENEO_CLIENT_ID, AKENEO_SECRET, AKENEO_USERNAME, AKENEO_PASSWORD - Akeneo integration details explained here
• Helper functions are organized into files in the helpers/ directory

Known Limitations / Areas for improvement

• Akeneo
  • API calls are not set up to handle rate limiting
  • API calls not setup for refresh tokens (which should not matter as long as the script takes less than the access token expire time which is 3600 seconds [1 hour])
  • Only a select number of fields are extracted from Akeneo API responses and are sent to Airtable (see helpers/formatObjects.js), for example, only products' English names
• General
  • As a prototype, the current code does not have robust error handling or retry logic