Using Glide Tables API

The Glide Tables API is available to anyone with the Pro, Business, or Enterprise plan. Connecting to your Glide Tables via the API allows you to automate your data management and integrate it with your own applications.

Using Glide Tables API

You can leverage Glide Tables API in lots of different ways. Let’s break down a few different possibilities together.

Mutations

The mutateTables call in each Glide curl statement adds one or more mutation operation for tables in an app in Glide's queue. After they're added to the queue, they can be processed anytime after the call returns the actions.

This call takes a JSON body of the following form:

1 {
2     "appID": "APP-ID",
3     "mutations": [MUTATION, ...]
4 }

The call will succeed if all mutations succeed. It will fail if even one mutation fails. It will return a JSON response that's an array of results—one for each mutation. If a mutation fails, then its result has a property error. which is an error message.

Keep in mind:

• Actions that are enqueued are not guaranteed to succeed. For example, an action to delete a row that does not exist might successfully be queued. However, it will not be processed successfully since there is nothing to delete.
• Actions are not guaranteed to be processed in sequence. For example, two added rows will not necessarily be added in the order they are given in the mutations array.

Add rows

The add-row-to-table mutation adds one row to your table.

1 {
2     "kind": "add-row-to-table",
3     "tableName": "TABLE-NAME",
4     "columnValues": {
5         "COLUMN-NAME": "COLUMN-VALUE",
6         ...
7     }
8 }

If the table has a Row ID column and the call is successful, the result will have a property rowID with the row ID of the row to be added.

Set columns

The set-columns-in-row mutation sets one or more columns in an existing row in your table.

1 {
2     "kind": "set-columns-in-row",
3     "tableName": "TABLE-NAME",
4     "columnValues": {
5         "COLUMN-NAME": "COLUMN-VALUE",
6         ...
7     },
8
9     ROW-ID-OR-INDEX
10 }

The ROW-ID-OR-INDEX is one of the following:

• "rowID": "ROW-ID"
• "rowIndex": ROW-INDEX"

Delete rows

The delete-row mutation deletes an existing row from your table.

1. {
2.     "kind": "delete-row",
3.     "tableName": "TABLE-NAME",
4.     ROW-ID-OR-INDEX
5. }

Queries

The queryTables call takes a list of table names and returns all the rows in those tables.

It takes a JSON body of the following form:

1. {
2.     "appID": "jD5sfkQujM9ywabItn0l",
3.     "queries": [QUERY, ...]
5. }

Each query looks like this:

1. {
2.     "tableName": "TABLE-NAME",
3.     "startAt": CONTINUATION
5. }

startAt is optional, and needs only be sent when continuing a previous query that did not return all rows. For example:

The call returns an array with one element for each query, each of which looks like this:

1. {
2.         "rows": [ROW, ...],
3.         "next": CONTINUATION
5. }

Each row is a row object, with one property per column. The next field will only be sent when there are more rows in the table than Glide sent in the response. To get more rows, make another call and send the CONTINUATION in startAt.

Filtered Queries with Big Tables

When querying a Big Table with SQL, a query looks like this:

{
    "sql": "SELECT * FROM ...",
    "params": [PARAM1, PARAM2, ...]
}

The params array is optional, but it must be given if the SQL query refers to any parameters.

The allowed SQL is a small strict subset of ANSI SQL. The restrictions are:

• All columns must be selected via *, nothing else can be used
• Only one table can be queried
• No joins or sub-queries
• No group-by
• ORDER BY only allows sorting by a single column
• The WHERE clause allows conditions combined with AND, as well as OR. ORs can be nested within ANDs, but not the other way around.
• Only a few conditions are allowed:
  • Checking for equality with =, or comparisons with <, >, <=, >=, between a column and a constant, or a column and a column
  • Checking whether a column is (not) empty with IS [NOT] NULL
• LIMIT is supported, but the API will not return more than 1000 rows

Query parameters

The preferred way for the query to include constant values is via parameters, to avoid having to escape strings and format numbers. These are written as numbers, starting at 1, preceded by a dollar sign, i.e. $1, $2, ... If the query uses parameters then they must be passed in the params array. $1 refers to the first element in that array, $2 to the second, and so on. Parameters can be strings, numbers, and booleans, as well as date-times formatted as strings like 1992-01-01T12:18:25.040Z.

Other considerations

• The table name for FROM has to be the same table name that would otherwise be passed as tableName
• The column names are the same as used with the regular API
• Continuations (startAt) are not yet supported

Example

Let's say we want to query a table for which the curl command for Add rows is this:

curl --request POST 'https://api.glideapp.io/api/function/queryTables' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer **********' \
  --data-raw '{
  "appID": "i9nkuGit0hSil4z6GzEn",
  "mutations": [
    {
      "kind": "add-row-to-table",
      "tableName": "native-table-ae5c9f4b-a2be-4fdf-bc9a-27db74c3aaa0",
      "columnValues": {
        "Name": "Name",
        "Material": "Material",
        "Category": "Category",
        "Image": "Image",
        "Price": "Price",
        "ID": "ID",
        "CompanyID": "CompanyID"
      }
    }
  ]
}'

We want to get the first 10 rows from that table where

• Name is Recycled Soft Hat and
• Material is Wooden or Category is Shoes

The query we would send to queryTables in that case would be

{
  "sql": "SELECT * FROM \"native-table-ae5c9f4b-a2be-4fdf-bc9a-27db74c3aaa0\" WHERE \"Name\" = $1 AND (\"Material\" = $2 OR \"Category\" = $3) LIMIT 10",
  "params": ["Recycled Soft Hat", "Wooden", "Shoes"]
}

Note that we have to quote the column names in SQL so they're interpreted case-sensitively.

The full curl command would be

curl --request POST 'https://api.glideapp.io/api/function/queryTables' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer **********' \
  --data-raw '{
  "appID": "i9nkuGit0hSil4z6GzEn",
  "queries": [
    {
      "sql": "SELECT * FROM \"native-table-ae5c9f4b-a2be-4fdf-bc9a-27db74c3aaa0\" WHERE \"Name\" = $1 AND (\"Material\" = $2 OR \"Category\" = $3) LIMIT 10",
      "params": ["Recycled Soft Hat", "Wooden", "Shoes"]
    }
  ]
}'

Learn Glide Tables API

Want to see the API in action? Explore the resources below.

• Article: Getting Started with Glide API
• Video: How to Use the Glide Tables API (Getting Started in 2022)