The next generation of the Quickbase API
The next generation of the Quickbase API
When we first released our library of Quickbase APIs, it was a historic moment. We were far in front of the rest of the market in making it easy for people to get software to talk to other systems. However, a lot has changed since then in terms of customer expectations and common API patterns. That’s why we’re hard at work building a new set of APIs from the ground up.
You’ll soon be able to try out these new APIs for yourselves, so we wanted to give you a sneak preview of what to expect.
APIs, what are they good for?
At the highest level, APIs (short for Application Programming Interfaces) allow people to integrate software systems to get them to work together. Since your business has many different needs, you have a technology stack which includes many different systems. If you’re not careful, this can lead to isolated silos of data that make it hard to see the big picture of what’s going on with your business. Using APIs is an extremely powerful and versatile way to integrate your various systems, since APIs can be used to connect virtually any piece of software on the web.
In Quickbase, APIs are so popular that we get more traffic from our API than we do from users logging into the product on the web.
Benefits of the new Quickbase API
- Simple and modern formatting: Developers can look forward to having a modern, RESTful, JSON-based library of APIs for Quickbase. These APIs will more closely resemble common API patterns and best practices you see with other platforms, helping you to more quickly and intuitively build.
- Easily test your API calls: Our new API Portal not only documents each API call you can use and how to format them, but it also allows you to quickly test your calls. We’ll also offer more consolidated, intuitive guidance around the terminology you need to build those API calls as well as Javascript and Python code samples.
- New functionality: We’ve added new functions with our new set of APIs, such as pulling summary reports, getting field usage details, and returning more detail when retrieving an app’s schema.
- Consolidated set of APIs: We’ve streamlined the collection of about 60 API calls we have today into around 10 calls, focused on the fundamental building blocks of Quickbase: apps, tables, and records. Rather than remember when you need to use API_AddRecord, API_EditRecord, or API_ImportFromCSV, with our new APIs, adding a record is as simple as making a POST request to our records endpoint.
We know how crucial integrations are for your business, which is why we’re completely re-imagining the API experience. We want to be bold in defining what the next decade or more of extensibility will look like, and we can’t wait for you to try it out. We’ll be opening an early access in March 2020. If you’re interested in participating, please fill out our registration form and check the “Extending Quickbase” box.
Additional resources
- The Empower 2019 product keynote address (start at the 55-minute mark for the API section)
- Harrison’s Empower 2019 breakout session: The Next Evolution of Quickbase APIs