Baserow 0.5: CSV import, REST API, and authentication tokens

We received many feature requests after launching the first version in April. Importing existing data and exposing data publicly via a REST API endpoint were popular requests. We’re excited to announce that both of these features are now included in the 0.5.0 release! Baserow has also received contributions from the community, including a step-by-step guide for installing Baserow on an Ubuntu server, an email field, delete confirmations, and more.

Importing existing data

To save you time and effort, we’ve implemented a CSV and tabular paste importer. When creating a new table, you can choose to use an importer. With the CSV importer, you can upload a file, choose a column separator, and preview your data. You can also copy data from a spreadsheet and paste it into the tabular paste importer.

We have plans to create importers for Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, Google Sheets, XML, JSON, and more. You can even create your own importer by developing a plugin.

Publicly exposing data via a REST API endpoint

One of the most requested features was the ability to easily expose data via a public REST API. This allows you to integrate Baserow with your existing application or website. For example: you can create a table with projects in Baserow and display them on your portfolio website. You don’t need to set up a backend or CMS yourself, and your site can be fully static. You can perform create, read, update, and delete operations on the table.

Creating a token

To expose your data publicly, you need to generate an authentication token. You can do this in your account settings by clicking on the account button in the bottom left corner. Then, navigate to the API tokens section and create a new token for a specific workspace. You can select permissions for each CRUD operation on the workspace, database, and table level.

Using the API documentation

Once you have your table and API token, you can use the generated API documentation. It provides instructions and example requests in cURL, HTTP, Axios (JavaScript), and Requests (Python).

View your API documentation here

All changes

Here are all the changes in Baserow version 0.5.0:

• Importing existing data
• Publicly exposing data via a REST API endpoint
• Highlighting a row when selecting a cell
• Fixed a validation bug when changing the link row table
• Fixed an error when there is no view
• Added a step-by-step Ubuntu installation guide
• Added an email field
• Added the ability to navigate a dropdown with arrow keys
• Added delete confirmation modals
• Fixed a bug in web frontend URL validation