I’m working with the AirTable API and running into an issue where my requests are returning way more information than I actually need. Right now when I make a call to my database, it pulls back every single field and record which makes the response really heavy and slow.
What I want to do is only get specific fields back, like just the movie titles instead of all the metadata, descriptions, ratings, and other columns. I’ve been experimenting with different parameters in my API call but I keep getting either error messages or the exact same full dataset coming back.
Is there a way to specify which fields I want returned in the API request? I’m looking for something that will make my queries more efficient by only fetching the data I actually plan to use in my application.
I hit this same issue last year pulling dashboard data. Only needed names and IDs but got massive JSON responses with everything. API calls were crawling.
URL encode field names with spaces or special characters. “Movie Title” becomes “Movie%20Title”.
Want fewer records back? Use maxRecords parameter. maxRecords=10 returns just the first 10 records.
If you’re using axios or fetch, build the URL programmatically instead of manual encoding. Much cleaner.
The fields parameter works great, but watch the syntax based on how you’re making requests. With REST clients or code, pass multiple fields as separate parameters like ?fields=Movie%20Title&fields=Director&fields=Rating instead of array notation. Array syntax breaks with some HTTP libraries.
Field filtering runs server-side, so you’ll see faster response times and less bandwidth usage right away. One gotcha: filtering doesn’t reduce API rate limits - you pay the same per request no matter how much data you pull. But the speed boost is huge when you’re only grabbing a few fields from tables with dozens of columns.
Double check your field names match exactly what’s in Airtable - case sensitive, spaces, special characters and all. I wasted hours debugging because I had “movie_title” in my API call but the actual column was “Movie Title”. The API won’t throw an error - it just ignores invalid field names and returns everything. Also, if you’re using linked records, the fields parameter only works on the main table. Linked record data still comes back in full unless you exclude those columns from your field list.
Just hit this too! You can combine fields with filterByFormula to nail exactly what you want. Try filterByFormula={Status}='Active'&fields=Movie%20Title - cuts response size way down. Also worth checking your base permissions. Read-only access often performs better when you’re just querying data.