CMS API | HubDB

OverviewEndpoints

HubDB is a relational data store representing data as rows, columns, and cells in a table, much like a spreadsheet. You can use HubDB to store and manage data, power HubSpot CMS pages, and more. You can modify HubDB tables from within your HubSpot account or using the HubDB API. You can also access HubDB tables with HubL to use their data on HubSpot CMS pages and programmable emails. 

Please note: endpoints that support GET also support CORS, so you can access data in a table client-side using JavaScript and your account ID. Other methods and the Get all tables endpoint require authentication and do not support CORS.

Below, learn about some of the basic endpoints for creating and retrieving HubDB table data. To see all available endpoints, click the Endpoints tab at the top of this article.

Rate limits

HubDB API requests have different rate limits, depending on the type of request:

  • Any GET requests made that don't require authentication (including client-side JavaScript requests) are limited to 10 requests per second. These requests won't count towards the daily limit.
  • All other requests using authentication follow the standard limits.

Changes in v3

  • Tables should have both name and label. This name cannot be changed once the table is created. Names can only include lowercase letters, digits, and underscores and cannot begin with a number. Both name and label should be unique in the account.
  • API supports both table id and name in the URL paths.
  • GET row endpoints return column name instead of id in values field. Also, POST / PUT / PATCH row endpoints require column name instead of id in values field.
  • Row update PATCH endpoints now accept sparse updates, which means you can specify only the column values that you need to update (whereas you had to specify all the column values in the previous versions). When you update a column with a list of values such as multiselect, you need to specify the list of all the values. In order to delete the value for a column, you need to specify the column with the value as null in the request. 
  • Removed the endpoints to get / update / delete a row cell in favor of the row update PATCH endpoints.
  • Import endpoint now supports an optional field idSourceColumn along with existing fields in the JSON-formatted options. You can use this field to specify the column in the csv file which contains row ids. To import new rows along with the new values for existing rows, you can simply specify 0 as the row id for the new rows and the valid row ids for the existing columns.  See more details in the Import section below. Also you can use column names or ids in the target field of the column mappings in the JSON-formatted options.
  • Clone endpoint requires a new name and new label.

Draft vs live tables

HubDB tables have both draft and live versions and live versions can be published or unpublished. This will allow you to update data in the table, either for page previews or testing or to allow for a manual approval process, without affecting any live pages.

Draft data can be reviewed and then pushed in HubSpot, or with the /push-live endpoint. The draft data can also be discarded via /reset endpoint, allowing you to revert to the current live version of the data without disruption.

Create a HubDB table

To create a HubDB table, make a POST request to /cms/v3/hubdb/tables.

In the request body, specify the following required fields:

Use this table to describe parameters / fields
FieldTypeDescription Example
name
String

The internal name of the table. This name cannot be changed once the table is created. Names can only include lowercase letters, digits, and underscores and cannot begin with a number.

 "name": "my_table"
label
String

The label of the table that users see when editing the table in HubSpot.

 "label":"My table"

In addition, you can specify the following optional fields:

Use this table to describe parameters / fields
FieldTypeDescription Example
useForPages
Boolean

Whether the table can be used for creating dynamic pages.

 "useForPages": false
allowPublicAPIAccess
Boolean

Whether the table can be read without authorization.

 "allowPublicApiAccess": false
allowChildTables
Boolean

Whether child tables can be created for the table.

 "allowChildTables": false
enableChildTablePages
Boolean

Whether multilevel dynamic pages should be created using child tables.

 "enableChildTablePages": false
columns
Object

The columns of the table. Learn more about column properties in the Add table columns sections.

 See "Add table columns" section below

Without any columns added yet, your create request might look like the following:

//example request { "name": "test_table", "label": "Test Table", "useForPages": true, "allowPublicApiAccess": false, "allowChildTables": true, "enableChildTablePages": false, "columns": [], }

Add table columns

Each column in a HubDB table can be defined with the following properties:

Use this table to describe parameters / fields
FieldTypeDescription Example
name
String

Required. The internal name of the column. Cannot be changed after the column is created.

 "name": "row_name"
label
String

Optional. The label for the column that users will see when editing the table in HubSpot.

 "label": "Row label"
type
String

The data type of the column. Must be one of the following:

  • text: a text field.
  • richtext:  a text field that supports basic HTML formatting. Not recommended for raw HTML, as it may impact whether the HTML is editable in HubSpot. Editing the code in HubSpot may also impact the way the code is rendered. 
  • number: a number field.
  • boolean: represented as a checkbox in HubSpot. Use 0 for unchecked and 1 for checked.
  • date: stores a specific date as a millisecond timestamp set to midnight UTC.
  • datetime: stores a date and a time as a millisecond timestamp.
  • select: the column can only be set to one of a set of options. See the options field below for required properties.
  • multiselect: the column can be set to one or more of a set of options. See the options field below for required properties.
  • location: stores a latitude and longitude location.
  • image: stores the URL of an image.
  • video: stores the player ID of the video.
  • foreign_ID: the column will reference a column from another HubDB table. In addition, you must define the other HubDB table with the following properties:
    • foreignTableId: the ID of the other HubDB table. 
    • foreignColumnId: the ID of the column in the other HubDB table.
  • currency: stores the number as a currency value.
 "type": "type"
options
Object

A list of options for select and multiselect columns. Each option is defined with a name along with a type equal to option.

 "option": [{"name":"Option 1", "type":"option"}, {"name": "Option 2", "type": "option"}]

Using the above fields, your request to create a new HubDB table might look like the following:

JSON 
//example request
{
 "label": "Test Table",
 "name": "test_table",
 "columns": [
 {
   "name": "text_column",
   "label": "Text Column",
   "archived": false,
   "type": "TEXT"
 },
 {
   "name": "number_column",
   "label": "Number Column",
   "archived": false,
   "type": "NUMBER"
 },
 {
   "name": "multiselect",
   "label": "Multi Select Column",
   "archived": false,
   "type": "multiselect",
   "options": [
   {
     "name": "Option 1",
     "type": "option"
   },
   {
     "name": "Option 2",
     "type": "option"
   }
   ]
 }
 ],
 "useForPages": true,
 "allowChildTables": true,
 "enableChildTablePages": false,
 "dynamicMetaTags": {
 },
 "allowPublicApiAccess": false
}

After creating a table, columns will be assigned IDs in ascending order. When updating existing columns, include the column's id field in the input object.

Add table rows

You can add rows either manually through the API, or you can import rows from a CSV file.

To add rows to a HubDB table, make a POST request to /cms/v3/hubdb/tables/{tableIdOrName}/rows.

For each table row, you can include the following fields:

Add table rows fields
FieldTypeDescription Example
values
Object

A list of key-value pairs with the column name and the value you want to add to it.

If you don't want to set a specific value for a column, you can omit the column name from the list of key-value pairs.

 "values": { "text_column": "sample text", "number_column": 76}
path
String

For tables enabled for dynamic pages, path is the path suffix used for the page created for this row.

 "path": "example_url_path"
name
String

For tables enabled for dynamic pages, name is the HTML title used for the page created for this row.

 "name": "Example Title"
childTableId
Number

When creating multilevel dynamic pages, childTableId specifies the child table ID.

 "childTableId": 123456
id
Number

The ID of the row, in ascending order. When adding rows to a new table, you can optionally specify row IDs, but otherwise HubSpot will assigned the IDs automatically. When adding rows to an existing table, you should specify the ID

 "childTableId": 123456

Using the above fields, your request might look similar to the following:

//example request { "values": { "text_column": "sample text value", "number_column": 76, "rich_text_column": "<strong>This is a styled paragraph.</strong>", "date_column": 1591228800000, "date_time_column": 1604450520000, "boolean_column": 1, "select_column": { "name": "option 1", "type": "option" }, "multiselect_column": [ { "name": "Option 1", "type": "option" }, { "name": "Option 2", "type": "option" } ], "url_column": "https://www.hubspot.com/marketing", "video_column": 3392210008, "image_column": { "url": "https://f.hubspotusercontentqa00.net/hubfs/99992002/image3%20(1).jpg", "width": 1600, "height": 900, "type": "image" }, "foreign_id_column": [ { "id": "4364402239", "type": "foreignid" }, { "id": "4364402240", "type": "foreignid" } ] }, "path": "test_path", "name": "test_title", "childTableId": "1902373" }

Import rows from CSV

To import data into a HubDB table from a CSV file, make a POST request to /cms/v3/hubdb/tables/{tableIdOrName}/draft/import.

The import endpoint takes a multipart/form-data POST request:

  • config: a set of JSON-formatted options for the import. 
  • file: the CSV file that you want to import. 

In config, include the following fields as a JSON string:

Use this table to describe parameters / fields
FieldTypeDescription Example
skipRows
Number

The number of header rows that should be skipped over. This field defaults to 1, skipping the first row and treating it as a header. Set this to 0 if all of the rows are valid data. 

 "skipRows": 0
separator
String

The column delimiter in the CSV file. Set to "," by default.

 "separator": ","
idSourceColumn
Number

The index of the column in the source file containing the row’s ID (hs_id).

If this column is specified, the import will update the existing rows in the table for the matching row IDs from the CSV file. This is optional and you can ignore this during the first time you import data into a table.

See the Reset options section below more detailed information.

 "idSourceColumn": 1
resetTable
Boolean

Defaults to false, meaning that the table's rows will be updated without removing any existing rows. If set to true, the spreadsheet rows will overwrite table data, meaning that any rows in the table that aren't in the spreadsheet will be deleted.

See the Reset options section below more detailed information.

 "resetTable": true
nameSourceColumn
Number

For tables enabled for dynamic pages, nameSourceColumn specifies the column in the CSV file that contains the row's name. Column numbers are in ascending order, with the first column being 1.

 "nameSourcecolumn": 5
pathSourceColumn
Number

For tables enabled for dynamic pages, pathSourceColumn specifies the column in the CSV file that contains the row's path. Column numbers are in ascending order, with the first column being 1.

 "pathSourcecolumn": 6
childTableSourceColumn
Number

Specifies the column in the CSV file that contains the row's childTableId. Column numbers are in ascending order, with the first column being 1.

 "childTableSourcecolumn": 3
columnMappings
Array

A list of mappings for the columns in the source file to the columns in the destination HubDB table.

Each mapping must have the following format: {"source":1,"target”:"columnIdOrName"} 

  • source: the column index in the source file. For example, 2 for the second column.
  • target: the ID or name of the HubDB table column. You can get the ID or name of a column by getting the details for the table.

If your file has an hs_id column, you shouldn't include it in columnMappings. Instead, include it as the idSourceColumn to update existing rows.

 "columnMappings": [{"source":1, "target": 2}, {"source": 2, "target": "column_name"}]
primaryKeyColumn
String

The name of a column in the target HubDB table that will be used for deduplication. The column's ID cannot be used for this field.

 "primaryKeyColumn": "column_name"
encoding
String

The file's encoding type. For example, utf-8, ascii, iso-8859-2, iso-8859-5, iso-2022-jp, windows-1252.

 "encoding": "utf-8"
format
String

Only CSV is supported.

 "format": "csv"

Using the above table, your config JSON might look like the following:

// example config JSON { "skipRows": 1, "separator": ",", "idSourceColumn": 1, "resetTable": false, "columnMappings": [ { "target": 1, "source": 2 }, { "target": 2, "source": "zip_code" }, ], "primaryKeyColumn": "name", "encoding": "utf-8", "format": "csv" }

Date formatting

There are several formats you can use when importing data into a date-type column.

Integers

  • yyyy/mm/dd
  • yyyy/mm/dd
  • mm/dd/yyyy
  • mm/dd/yy

These formats require the month to precede the day (i.e., dd/mm/yy is not accepted). Integers can be separated by hyphens (-) or slashes (/).

Relaxed dates

You can also import date formats that are less standardized than integer-based dates. For example:

  • The 1st of March in the year 2022
  • Fri Mar 4 2022
  • March 4th '22

Relative dates

HubSpot will parse the following date formats relative to the current day:

  • next Thursday
  • Today
  • tomorrow
  • 3 days from now

Reset options

When importing data from a CSV file into a HubDB table, you can set the  resetTable field to true or false (default) to manage whether HubDB row data is overwritten.

  • If resetTable is set to true:
      • If the rows in the CSV file does not have a row ID column (hs_id or row ID is specified as 0, those rows will be inserted with the new row IDs generated.
      • If the row IDs in the CSV file already exists in the target table, the existing rows in the table will be updated with the new values from the input file.
      • If the table has rows but the input CSV file does not have those row IDs, those rows will be deleted from the target table.
      • If the row IDs in the input CSV file do not exist in the target table, those rows will be inserted with the new row IDs generated and the row IDs given in the input file will be ignored.
      • If the input CSV file does not contain the row ID column at all, all the rows will be deleted from the target table and the rows from the input file will be inserted with the new row IDs generated.
  • If resetTable is set to false (default):
      • If the row IDs in the CSV file already exists in the target table, the existing rows in the table will be updated with the new values from the input file.
      • If the table has rows but the input CSV file does not have those row IDs, those rows will not be deleted from the target table and those rows will remain unchanged.
      • If the row IDs in the input CSV file do not exist in the target table, those rows will be inserted with the new row IDs generated and the row IDs given in the input file will be ignored.
      • If the rows in the CSV file does not have a row ID column or row ID is specified as 0, those rows will be inserted with the new row IDs generated.

Retrieve HubDB data

There are multiple ways to retrieve HubDB data, depending on whether you're looking for table details or the rows of a table:

  • To retrieve table details from all published tables, make a GET request to /cms/v3/hubdb/tables.
  • To retrieve table details from a specific published table, make a GET request to /cms/v3/hubdb/tables{tableIdOrName}.
  • To retrieve all rows from a specific table, make a GET request to /cms/v3/hubdb/tables{tableIdOrName}/rows.
  • To retrieve a specific row from a table, make a GET request to /cms/v3/hubdb/tables{tableIdOrName}/rows/{rowId}.

To retrieve data from tables in draft mode, see the Endpoints tab at the top of this article.

When retrieving row data, you can further filter and sort the results.

Filter returned rows

When retrieving HubDB table data, you can apply filters as query parameters to receive specific data. Filter query parameters are constructed as follows: columnName__operator. 

For example, if you have a number column named bar, you can filter results to only include rows where bar is greater than 10: &bar__gt=10.

All filters are ANDed together (OR filters are not currently supported).

When filtering, keep the following in mind:

  • When passing values for multiselect columns, the values should be comma-separated (e.g. multiselect_column__contains=1,2).
  • For datetime filters, you can use relative dates in place of timestamps in order to specify a value relative to the current time. For example, -3h would correspond to the timestamp 3 hours before now, whereas 10s would correspond to 10 seconds in the future. Supported time units are ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours), d (days). Current time can be used by specifying a zero value: 0s
  • For the purposes of these filters, the built in column hs_id is a number column, the hs_created_at column is a datetime, and the hs_path and hs_name columns are text columns.

Below, learn which operators can be applied to which column types:

Use this table to describe parameters / fields
OperatorNameDescription
eq (or none)
Equals

All column types.

This filter is applied if no operator is used. When used with multiselect columns, returns rows that exact match supplied values.

ne
Not equal to

All column types.

contains
Contains

Text, richtext, and multiselect.

When used with multiselect columns, returns rows that contain all of the supplied values. This filter is case sensitive.

lt
Less than

Number, date, and datetime.

lte
Less than or equal to

Number, date, and datetime.

gt
Greater than

Number, date, and datetime.

gte
Greater than or equal to

Number, date, and datetime.

is_null
Null

All column types except boolean.

This filter doesn't require a value (e.g. &exampleColumn__is_null=).

not_null
Not null

All column types except boolean.

This filter doesn't require a value (e.g. &exampleColumn__not_null=).

like
Like

Text and richtext.

not_like
Not like

Text and richtext.

icontains
Contains

Text and richtext.

This filter is case insensitive.

startswith
Starts with

Text and richtext.

in
In

Number, select, and multiselect.

Returns rows where the column includes at least one of the passed options. When there is no other sort in the query parameter, the results will be sorted in the order in which values are specified in the in operator.

Sort returned rows

When retrieving HubDB data, you can apply sorting as a query parameter to determine the order of the returned data. To sort data, add a sort query parameter and specify the column name:

&sort=columnName

By default, data will be returned in the natural order of the specified column. You can reverse the sort by adding a - to the column name: 

&sort=-columnName

You can include this parameter multiple times to sort by multiple columns.

In addition to sorting by a column, there are three functions that can be used:

  • geo_distance(location_column_name, latitude, longitude): takes the name of a location column and coordinates, returns the rows ordered by how far away the values of the specified location column are from the provided coordinates.
  • length(column_name): takes the name of a column, returns the rows ordered by the length of the column value (calculated as a string)
  • random(): returns the rows in random order.

These functions also support reverse ordering. For example, the following geo_distance sort returns items that are the farthest away first:

sort=-geo_distance(location_column,42.37,-71.07) 

Using the above fields, your config might look like the following:

//example config { "skipRows":1, "format":"csv", "separator":",", "encoding":"utf-8", "columnMappings": [ {"target":1,"source":"text_column"}, {"target":2,"source":"number_column"}, {"target":3,"source":"multiselect"} ], "idSourceColumn":1, "pathSourceColumn":2, "nameSourceColumn":4, "childTableSourceColumn":5, "resetTable":true }

Example curl command for the import endpoint:

curl -L -X POST 'https://api.hubspotqa.com/hubdb/api/v2/tables/xxxxxx/import?portalId=xxxxxxx' \ -H 'Content-Type: multipart/form-data' \ -F 'config="{\"skipRows\":1,\"format\":\"csv\",\"separator\":\",\",\"encoding\":\"iso-8859-1\",\"columnMappings\":[{\"target\":1,\"source\":7},{\"target\":3,\"source\":8}],\"idSourceColumn\":1,\"pathSourceColumn\":null,\"nameSourceColumn\":null,\"childTableSourceColumn\":null,\"resetTable\":true}"' \ -F 'file=@"/Users/xxxxxxxxxxxxx/Downloads/filename.csv"'
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