New BaseQL Features: View Querying and Enhanced Relation Controls

We're excited to announce two powerful new features for BaseQL that significantly enhance how you can interact with your Airtable data through GraphQL.

These updates come directly from conversations with our users about their workflow challenges, and we're thrilled to deliver solutions that make BaseQL even more valuable for your projects.

Querying Airtable Views

BaseQL now supports querying specific Airtable views using the new _view argument. This feature leverages one of Airtable's most powerful UI capabilities - the ability to create custom views with specific sorting, filtering, and grouping configurations.

Why this matters

Many BaseQL users were manually implementing sorting through rank columns or creating complex filter combinations to match what they had already configured in Airtable views. Now, you can simply:

  1. Configure your data organization visually in Airtable using drag-and-drop
  2. Query that exact configuration with a single parameter in BaseQL

This is particularly valuable for content management use cases where teams need to frequently reorganize data presentation without technical assistance.

Example

Here's how you can query a specific view while still applying additional filters:

{
  people(
    _view: "Custom Sort",
    _page_size: 2,
    _filter: {vegan: true}
  ) {
    name
    vegan
  }
}

The query above will:

  • Use the sorting and organization from your "Custom Sort" view
  • Limit results to 2 records per page
  • Only include records where the "vegan" field is true

Filtering and Sorting Related Records

Our second new feature brings advanced querying capabilities to linked records. BaseQL now supports filtering, pagination, and sorting arguments on nested relation fields, giving you precise control over how related data is fetched.

Why this matters

Previously, when querying related records, you would receive all linked items with limited control over their order or filtering. This could lead to performance issues with large data sets and required additional client-side processing to get the specific related records you needed.

Now you can:

  • Filter related records using the same powerful filtering syntax available at the root level
  • Order related records by any field
  • Paginate through related records to manage response size

Example

{
  people(name: "Rob") {
    name
    friends(
      _filter: { vegan: true },
      _order_by: { name: "asc" },
      _page_size: 2,
      _page: 1
    ) {
      name
      vegan
      city {
        name
      }
    }
  }
}

This query will:

  • Find a person named "Rob"
  • Retrieve only their vegan friends
  • Sort those friends alphabetically by name
  • Return only 2 friends per page, starting with the first page

Getting Started

Both of these features are available now to all BaseQL users. No changes to your configuration are needed - simply start using the new parameters in your queries.

Our documentation has been updated with live examples and technical details for both features.

What's Next?

We're constantly working to make BaseQL more powerful while keeping it simple to use. If you have ideas for features that would make BaseQL more useful for your projects, we'd love to hear from you! Just email us at [email protected] or reply to any of our update emails.

BaseQL provides a GraphQL API for your Airtable bases, making it easier to build modern applications with your Airtable data.