jovo-cms-airtable v3.6.1

Airtable CMS Integration

To view this page on the Jovo website, visit https://v3.jovo.tech/marketplace/jovo-cms-airtable

Learn how to use Airtable as CMS for your Alexa Skills and Google Actions.

• Introduction
• Configuration
• Default Table Types
  • Default
  • Responses
  • KeyValue
  • ObjectArray
• Advanced Features
  • Caching
  • Platform-specific Responses

Introduction

Airtable is a popular spreadsheet-meets-database product that is used for all sorts of use cases.

With this Jovo CMS integration, you can manage all the content of your Alexa Skills and Google Actions in Airtable. This makes collaboration easier and enables you update and add content faster.

Here's what a sample table could look like:

You can use this Airtable Base as a template to get started.

Configuration

To get started, install the following package:

$ npm install --save jovo-cms-airtable

Add it to your app.js file and register it with the use command:

// @language=javascript

// src/app.js

const { AirtableCMS } = require('jovo-cms-airtable');

app.use(new AirtableCMS());

// @language=typescript

// src/app.ts

import { AirtableCMS } from 'jovo-cms-airtable';

app.use(new AirtableCMS());

Next, add the necessary configurations to your config.js file:

// @language=javascript

// src/config.js

module.exports = {

    cms: {
        AirtableCMS: {
            apiKey: '<api-key>',
            baseId: '<base-id>',
            tables: [
                {
                    name: '<name>',
                    table: '<tableName>',
                    type: '<TableType>',
                    order: ['UserId', 'Name', 'Location'],
                    selectOptions: {
                        fields: ['UserId', 'Name', 'Location']
                        sort: [
                            {
                                field: "UserId",
                                direction: "desc"
                            }
                        ],
                    }
                },
            ]
        }
    }

    // ...

};

// @language=typescript

// src/config.ts

const config = {

    cms: {
        AirtableCMS: {
            apiKey: '<api-key>',
            baseId: '<base-id>',
            tables: [
                {
                    name: '<name>',
                    table: '<tableName>',
                    type: '<TableType>',
                    order: ['UserId', 'Name', 'Location'],
                    selectOptions: {
                        fields: ['UserId', 'Name', 'Location']
                        sort: [
                            {
                                field: "UserId",
                                direction: "desc"
                            }
                        ],
                    }
                },
            ]
        }
    }

    // ...

};

Default Table Types

Table types specify how the data will be transformed and saved.

• Default
• Responses
• KeyValue
• ObjectArray

Default

If you don't define a table type in the config.js, you receive an array of arrays that can be accessed like this:

this.$cms.name;

Responses

If you define the table type as Responses, the integration expects a spreadsheet of at least two columns:

• a key
• a locale, e.g. en, en-US, or de-DE

For this locale, you can then access the responses like this:

// i18n notation
this.t('key');

// Alternative
this.$cms.t('key');

You can add as many locales as you want by adding additional columns for each key.

KeyValue

If you define the table type as KeyValue, the integration expects a spreadsheet of at least two columns:

• a key
• a value

For every key, this will return the value as a string:

this.$cms.name.key;

ObjectArray

If you define the table type as ObjectArray, you will receive an array of objects where each row is converted to an object with the first row of the spreadsheet specifying the keys

Here's an example sheet:

And here's the array of objects you will receive:

[
  {
    name: 'Voice Summit',
    location: 'Newark, New Jersey, USA',
    date: '7/22/2019',
  },
  {
    name: 'SuperBot',
    location: 'San Francisco, California, USA',
    date: '4/2/2019',
  },
];

Access the array using:

this.$cms.name;

Advanced Features

• Caching
• Platform-specific Responses

Caching

The content of all tables is cached into the Jovo app object by default, which allows for faster response times. For some use cases (like testing), however, it might make sense to retrieve the data for some (or all) tables with every request. Since Jovo v2.1.4, we support these instant updates by setting the caching option to false.

You can choose between disabling caching for all tables, or just specific ones in your config.js file:

// @language=javascript

// src/config.js

module.exports = {
  cms: {
    AirtableCMS: {
      apiKey: '<api-key>',
      baseId: '<base-id>',
      tables: [
        {
          name: '<name>',
          table: '<tableName>',
          type: '<TableType>',
          selectOptions: {
            // ...
          },
          caching: false, // disable caching for this table
        },
      ],
      caching: false, // disable caching for all table
    },
  },

  // ...
};

// @language=typescript

// src/config.ts

const config = {
  cms: {
    AirtableCMS: {
      apiKey: '<api-key>',
      baseId: '<base-id>',
      tables: [
        {
          name: '<name>',
          table: '<tableName>',
          type: '<TableType>',
          selectOptions: {
            // ...
          },
          caching: false, // disable caching for this table
        },
      ],
      caching: false, // disable caching for all table
    },
  },

  // ...
};

Platform-specific Responses

Since Jovo v2.1.4 we support platform-specific responses for i18n, as well as for our CMS integrations. This allows you to have isolated output for a specified platform, without altering the default one.

In this example, the value for GOODBYE will be overwritten, whenever a response is triggered by an Alexa-Skill. WELCOME remains the same for all platforms. If you don't want any output for a specific platform, use /.