rsql

A modern, feature-rich command line SQL interface for data

rsql is a powerful and user-friendly command line SQL client that works with over 20 different data sources and formats. Whether you're working with databases, files, or cloud services, rsql provides a consistent and intuitive interface for all your data querying needs.

✨ Highlights

• Universal SQL Interface: Query databases, files, and cloud services with standard SQL
• Rich Interactive Experience: Syntax highlighting, auto-completion, and command history
• Multiple Output Formats: ASCII tables, JSON, CSV, HTML, and more
• Extensive Data Source Support: PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, DuckDB, Parquet, CSV, Excel, and many more
• Compression Support: Automatically handles compressed files (gzip, brotli, etc.)
• Embedded Database: Run PostgreSQL queries without external setup
• Multilingual: Interface available in 40+ languages

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🚀 Quick Start

Installation

Linux / MacOS:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/theseus-rs/rsql/releases/latest/download/rsql_cli-installer.sh | sh

or Homebrew:

brew install rsql

Windows:

irm https://github.com/theseus-rs/rsql/releases/latest/download/rsql_cli-installer.ps1 | iex

Cargo

cargo install rsql_cli

For detailed installation instructions, visit the rsql documentation.

Basic Usage

Interactive Mode:

# Connect to a database
rsql --url "postgresql://user:pass@localhost/mydb"

# Query a CSV file
rsql --url "csv://data.csv"

# Use DuckDB for in-memory analytics
rsql --url "duckdb://"

Execute Single Query:

# Run a query and exit
rsql --url "sqlite://database.db" -- "SELECT * FROM users LIMIT 10"

# Query a Parquet file
rsql --url "parquet://data.parquet" -- "SELECT column1, COUNT(*) FROM table GROUP BY column1"

📊 Supported Data Sources

Databases

• ClickHouse (clickhouse://)
• CockroachDB (cockroachdb://)
• CrateDB (cratedb://)
• DuckDB (duckdb://) - High-performance analytics
• DynamoDB (dynamodb://)
• LibSQL/Turso (libsql://)
• MySQL / MariaDB (mysql:// / mariadb://)
• PostgreSQL (postgresql:// / postgres://) - Including embedded PostgreSQL
• Redshift (redshift://)
• Snowflake (snowflake://)
• SQL Server (sqlserver://)
• SQLite (sqlite:// / rusqlite://)

File Formats

• Arrow (arrow://) - In-memory columnar format
• Avro (avro://) - Binary serialization format
• CSV/TSV (csv:// / tsv://) - Comma/tab-separated values
• Excel (excel://) - .xlsx and .xls files
• Fixed Width (fwf://) - Fixed-width format
• JSON/JSONL (json:// / jsonl://) - JSON documents
• ODS (ods://) - OpenDocument Spreadsheet
• ORC (orc://) - Optimized row columnar format
• Parquet (parquet://) - Columnar storage format
• XML (xml://) - XML documents
• YAML (yaml://) - YAML documents

Cloud & Remote

• FlightSQL (flightsql://) - Apache Arrow Flight SQL
• HTTP/HTTPS (http:// / https://) - Remote files
• S3 (s3://) - Amazon S3 and S3-compatible storage

Compression

Automatically handles: Gzip, Brotli, Bzip2, LZ4, XZ, Zstd

🎯 Common Use Cases

Database Operations

# Connect to PostgreSQL
rsql --url "postgresql://user:pass@localhost/mydb"

# Use embedded PostgreSQL (no external setup required)
rsql --url "postgresql://user@localhost/mydb?embedded=true"

# SQLite file
rsql --url "sqlite://database.db"

File Analysis

# Analyze CSV data
rsql --url "csv://sales.csv" -- "SELECT region, SUM(revenue) FROM table GROUP BY region"

# Query Excel spreadsheet
rsql --url "excel://report.xlsx" -- "SELECT * FROM table WHERE amount > 1000"

# Analyze Parquet files
rsql --url "parquet://logs.parquet" -- "SELECT date, COUNT(*) FROM table GROUP BY date"

Data Transformation

# Convert CSV to JSON
rsql --url "csv://input.csv" --format json -- "SELECT * FROM input"

# Query compressed files
rsql --url "csv://data.csv.gz" -- "SELECT column1, column2 FROM data"

# Combine multiple formats
rsql --url "duckdb://" -- "
  SELECT * FROM read_csv_auto('file1.csv') 
  UNION ALL 
  SELECT * FROM read_parquet('file2.parquet')
"

🛠️ Advanced Features

Output Formats

Control output with --format:

• ascii - ASCII table (default)
• csv - Comma-separated values
• html - HTML table
• json - JSON format
• markdown - Markdown table
• xml - XML format
• yaml - YAML format
• And more...

Configuration

# Set default format
rsql --url "sqlite://db.sqlite" --format json

# Custom delimiter for CSV output
rsql --url "postgresql://..." --format csv --delimiter ";"

# Expanded output for wide tables
rsql --url "..." --format expanded

📚 Examples

File Format Examples

CSV with custom options:

rsql --url "csv://data.csv?has_header=true&skip_rows=1"

Fixed-width file:

rsql --url "fwf://data.txt?widths=10,20,15&headers=id,name,email"

Delimited file with custom separator:

rsql --url "delimited://data.txt?separator=|&has_header=true"

Database Examples

PostgreSQL with SSL:

rsql --url "postgresql://user:pass@localhost/db?sslmode=require"

MySQL with charset:

rsql --url "mysql://user:pass@localhost/db?charset=utf8mb4"

🔧 Features

¹ Computer translations; human translations welcome

🔗 Connection URLs

¹ the driver will attempt to detect the type of file and automatically use the appropriate driver.
² libsql needs to be enabled with the libsql feature flag; it is disabled by default as it conflicts with rusqlite.

🛡️ Safety

These crates use #![forbid(unsafe_code)] to ensure everything is implemented in 100% safe Rust.

📄 License

Licensed under either of:

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

🤝 Contributing

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.

Need help? Check out the documentation or open an issue on GitHub.