Commandline tool for running SQL queries against JSON, CSV, Excel, Parquet, and more.

This is a CLI companion to DataStation (a GUI) for running SQL queries against data files. So if you want the GUI version of this, check out DataStation.

Install

Binaries for amd64 (x86_64) are provided for each release.

macOS, Linux

On macOS or Linux, you can run the following:

$ VERSION=0.1.0
$ curl -LO "https://github.com/multiprocessio/dsq/releases/download/$VERSION/dsq-$(uname -s | awk '{ print tolower($0) }')-x64-$VERSION.zip"
$ unzip dsq*.zip
$ sudo mv dsq /usr/local/bin/dsq

Or install manually from the releases page, unzip and add dsq to your $PATH.

Windows

Download the latest Windows release, unzip it, and add dsq to your $PATH.

Manual

If you are on another platform or architecture or want to grab the latest release, you can do so with Go 1.17+:

$ go install github.com/multiprocessio/dsq@latest

Usage

You can either pipe data to dsq or you can pass a file name to it.

If you are passing a file, it must have the usual extension for its content type.

For example:

$ dsq testdata.json "SELECT * FROM {} WHERE x > 10"

$ dsq testdata.ndjson "SELECT name, AVG(time) FROM {} GROUP BY name ORDER BY AVG(time) DESC"

Piping data to dsq

When piping data to dsq you need to set the -s flag and specify the file extension or MIME type.

For example:

$ cat testdata.csv | dsq -s csv "SELECT * FROM {} LIMIT 1"

$ cat testdata.parquet | dsq -s parquet "SELECT COUNT(1) FROM {}"

Multiple files and joins

You can pass multiple files to DSQ. As long as they are supported data files in a valid format, you can run SQL against all files as tables. Each table can be accessed by the string {N} where N is the 0-based index of the file in the list of files passed on the commandline.

For example this joins two datasets of differing origin types (CSV and JSON).

$ dsq testdata/join/users.csv testdata/join/ages.json \
      "select {0}.name, {1}.age from {0} join {1} on {0}.id = {1}.id"

Transforming data to JSON without querying

As a shorthand for dsq testdata.csv "SELECT * FROM {}" to convert supported file types to JSON you can skip the query and the converted JSON will be dumped to stdout.

For example:

$ dsq testdata.csv
[{...some csv data...},{...some csv data...},...]

Supported Data Types

Name File Extension(s) Notes

CSV csv

TSV tsv, tab

JSON json Must be an array of objects. Nested object fields are ignored.

Newline-delimited JSON ndjson, jsonl

Parquet parquet

Excel xlsx, xls Currently only works if there is only one sheet.

ODS ods Currently only works if there is only one sheet.

Apache Error Logs text/apache2error Currently only works if being piped in.

Apache Access Logs text/apache2access Currently only works if being piped in.

Nginx Access Logs text/nginxaccess Currently only works if being piped in.

Engine

Under the hood dsq uses DataStation as a library and under that hood DataStation uses SQLite to power these kinds of SQL queries on arbitrary (structured) data.

Comparisons

The speed column is based on rough benchmarks based on q's benchmarks. Eventually I'll do a more thorough and public benchmark.

Name Link Speed Supported File Types Engine

q http://harelba.github.io/q/ Fast CSV, TSV Uses SQLite

textql https://github.com/dinedal/textql Ok CSV, TSV Uses SQLite

octoql https://github.com/cube2222/octosql Slow JSON, CSV, Excel, Parquet Custom engine missing many features from SQLite

dsq Here Ok CSV, TSV, JSON, Newline-delimited JSON, Parquet, Excel, ODS (OpenOffice Calc), Logs Uses SQLite

Community

Join us on Discord.

How can I help?

Download the app and use it! Report bugs on Discord.

Before starting on any new feature though, check in on Discord!

Subscribe

If you want to hear about new features and how this works under the hood, sign up here.

License

This software is licensed under an Apache 2.0 license.