Import Historical Exchange Rates in Airtable

In this guide, we'll import daily historical exchange rates between two dates in Airtable. To do this, we'll use the Data Fetcher Airtable extension and connect to the exchangerate.host API with no-code.

Note: if you'd rather import the exchange rate for one particular historical date (rather than every day in a date range), take a look at the Historical date option in this guide.

Install Data Fetcher

Install Data Fetcher from the Airtable marketplace. After the extension launches, sign up for a free Data Fetcher account by entering a password and clicking 'Sign up for free'.

Import Historical Exchange Rates in Airtable

On the home screen of the Data Fetcher extension, click 'Create your first request'. Requests in Data Fetcher are how you import data to or send data from your Airtable base.

On the create request screen in Data Fetcher, for Application, select 'exchangerate.host'.

For Endpoint, select 'Daily historical rates'.

Enter a Name for your request, e.g. 'Import Historical Rates'.

Click 'Save & Continue'.

We are going to import historical rates for every day between a start date and end date. Set the Start date to the start of your desired date range. Do the same for End Date.

If you do not want to set a fixed Start/End Date, you can instead reference a table value with type 'Date' in your Airtable base.

Select the Base currency you want to use, e.g. 'USD'.

Select one or more Quote currencies, e.g. 'EUR' & 'GBP'. You can leave this blank to get all the available currencies.

Select the Output Table & View you want to import the historical exchange rates into.

Click 'Save & Run'.

The request will run and the Response field mapping modal will open. This is where you set how the fields from exchangerate.host should map to fields in the output table. For each field, you can either import or filter it. For an imported field, you can set whether to map them to an existing field or create a new field.

Make sure you import the 'Rates date', which has the date for each output row. The historical rate for each quote currency will be in a field called 'Rates SYMBOL', e.g. 'Rates EUR' for Euros. Make sure you import all of these too. Then click 'Save & Run'.

Data Fetcher will create any fields that need to be created in the output table, then run the request and import the historical exchange rates into your output table.

Import Historical Exchange Rates in Airtable Automatically

At the moment, we have to manually run the request to import the historical exchange rates. We can use Data Fetcher's scheduled requests feature to update them by converting currencies every 15 minutes/ hour/ day etc.

In Data Fetcher, scroll to Schedule and click 'Upgrade'.

A new tab will open where you can select a plan and enter your payment details to upgrade.

Return to the Data Fetcher extension and click 'I've done this'.

Under Schedule click '+ Authorize'.

Next, a new window will open where you'll be able to authorize the Airtable bases Data Fetcher can have access to.

If you select 'All current and future bases in all current and future workspaces' you should then avoid any issues with unauthorized bases in the future.

Click 'Grant access'.

In Data Fetcher, Schedule this request will now have toggled on.

Select how often you want the request to run, e.g. 'Every 15 mins'. Click 'Save' The request will now run on the schedule and import the historical exchange rates automatically.