Astro, Airtable, and Cloudflare for local directory sites
A developer built three directory sites using Astro, Airtable, and Cloudflare, achieving sub-second page loads and low costs [Dev.to]
The developer used Astro for the frontend, Airtable as the CMS, and Cloudflare for hosting, creating a static site generated at build time with edge functions for form handling [Dev.to]. The build pipeline pulls Airtable tables via the API, downloads attached images, and writes the data to a JSON file that Astro consumes. Astro's file-based routing creates a static HTML page for each record and taxonomy, with assets cached at the edge in Cloudflare Pages' dist/ folder.
Key constraints include content changes appearing only after a rebuild, Airtable attachment URLs expiring, and the free Airtable tier capping at a few hundred rows [Dev.to]. To address the first constraint, the author wired an Airtable automation to trigger a Cloudflare Deploy Hook, achieving near-real-time updates.
The architecture delivers sub-second first-byte times from Cloudflare's global edge network and incurs only storage fees for the static portion, keeping monthly bills low [Dev.to]. The architecture also abstracts the domain into a config file, enabling rapid re-skinning for new verticals without code changes. For example, changing taxonomy labels or slug bases requires no code changes, making it easy to adapt the architecture to different use cases.
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