vdsql: VisiData for Databases
Note: vdsql has been moved into the visidata mono-repo! This repo is now defunct.
A VisiData interface for databases
Powered by Ibis.
- query data in VisiData from any supported backend
- output resulting query in SQL, Substrait, or Python
- Python 3.8
- VisiData 2.10.2
- Ibis 3.2
- SQLite
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
- DuckDB
- ClickHouse
- Google BigQuery
- Snowflake
These backends are supported by Ibis and should work, but haven't specifically been tested with vdsql. If you have have problems connecting, please file an issue.
- Apache Impala
- Datafusion
- Dask
- PySpark
- HeavyAI
This will install both:
-
the usual
vd
with the vdsql plugin available (use-f vdsql
to use Ibis instead of builtin loaders), -
the
vdsql
script that acts identically tovd
but will use Ibis instead of VisiData's builtin loader.pip install vdsql
pip install git+https://github.com/visidata/vdsql.git
To minimize dependencies, only the sqlite backend is included by default. Install other backends for Ibis directly, and they will be supported automatically:
pip install 'ibis-framework[postgres]'
vdsql foo.sqlite # or .sqlite3
vdsql mysql://...
vdsql postgres://...
vdsql foo.duckdb # or .ddb
vdsql clickhouse://[email protected]:9440/?secure=1
vdsql bigquery:///bigquery-public-data
vdsql <file_or_url>
vd -f ibis <file_or_url>
where file_or_url
is any connection string supported by ibis.connect()
or any of the filetypes and options that VisiData itself supports.
A decent amount of work has gone into making vdsql
work just like VisiData.
You can learn about VisiData starting with the Intro to VisiData Tutorial and the VisiData documentation.
There are a few differences, however:
- Use
"
(dup-sheet) to run a new base query, including added columns, filtering for the current selection, and applying the current sort order. - By default vdsql will only get 10000 rows from a database source. To get a different number, use
z"
to create a new sheet with a different limit. - Some VisiData commands aren't implemented using the database engine.
The base VisiData commands can only use the 10000 loaded rows, and this might be misleading, so most not-implemented commands should be disabled.
But if you want to use the commands anyway, knowing the dataset is incomplete, you can use g'
to freeze the current set of loaded rows into a new sheet.
This sheet is a plain (non-database) VisiData sheet, so all VisiData commands can be used on it.
Use '
to cast the current column to its given type, which persists into future queries (with "
).
vdsql
uses the VisiData sidebar (introduced in v2.9) to show the SQL query for the current view.
- To toggle the sidebar on/off, press
b
. - To choose a sidebar option, press
zb
. - To open the sidebar as its own sheet, press
gb
.
In this way you can compose a SQL expression using VisiData commands, open the SQL sidebar, and save the resulting query to a file (or copy it into your system clipboard buffer).
vdsql
is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
Share and enjoy!