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 Homebrew

dsq is available on macOS Homebrew:

$ brew install dsq

Binaries on macOS, Linux, WSL

On macOS, Linux, and WSL you can run the following:

$ curl -LO "https://github.com/multiprocessio/dsq/releases/download/0.8.0/dsq-$(uname -s | awk '{ print tolower($0) }')-x64-0.8.0.zip"
$ unzip dsq-*-0.8.0.zip
$ sudo mv dsq /usr/local/bin/dsq

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

Binaries on Windows (not WSL)

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

Build and install from source

If you are on another platform or architecture or want to grab the latest release, you can do so with Go 1.18+:

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

dsq will likely work on other platforms that Go is ported to such as AARCH64 and OpenBSD, but tests and builds are only run against x86_64 Windows/Linux/macOS.

Usage

You can either pipe data to dsq or you can pass a file name to it. NOTE: piping data doesn't work on Windows.

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"

Or:

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

Pretty print

By default dsq prints ugly JSON. This is the most efficient mode.

$ dsq testdata/userdata.parquet 'select count(*) from {}'
[{"count(*)":1000}
]

If you want prettier JSON you can pipe dsq to jq.

$ dsq testdata/userdata.parquet 'select count(*) from {}' | jq
[
  {
    "count(*)": 1000
  }
]

Or you can enable pretty printing with -p or --pretty in dsq which will display your results in an ASCII table.

$ dsq --pretty testdata/userdata.parquet 'select count(*) from {}'
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|     1000 |
+----------+

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"

Or:

$ 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"
[{"age":88,"name":"Ted"},
{"age":56,"name":"Marjory"},
{"age":33,"name":"Micah"}]

You can also give file-table-names aliases since dsq uses standard SQL:

$ dsq testdata/join/users.csv testdata/join/ages.json \
  "select u.name, a.age from {0} u join {1} a on u.id = a.id"
[{"age":88,"name":"Ted"},
{"age":56,"name":"Marjory"},
{"age":33,"name":"Micah"}]

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...},...]

Array of objects nested within an object

DataStation and dsq's SQL integration operates on an array of objects. If your array of objects happens to be at the top-level, you don't need to do anything. But if your array data is nested within an object you can add a "path" parameter to the table reference.

For example if you have this data:

$ cat api-results.json
{
  "data": {
    "data": [
      {"id": 1, "name": "Corah"},
      {"id": 3, "name": "Minh"}
    ]
  },
  "total": 2
}

You need to tell dsq that the path to the array data is "data.data":

$ dsq --pretty api-results.json 'SELECT * FROM {0, "data.data"} ORDER BY id DESC'
+----+-------+
| id | name  |
+----+-------+
|  3 | Minh  |
|  1 | Corah |
+----+-------+

You can also use the shorthand {"path"} or {'path'} if you only have one table:

$ dsq --pretty api-results.json 'SELECT * FROM {"data.data"} ORDER BY id DESC'
+----+-------+
| id | name  |
+----+-------+
|  3 | Minh  |
|  1 | Corah |
+----+-------+

You can use either single or double quotes for the path.

Multiple Excel sheets

Excel files with multiple sheets are stored as an object with key being the sheet name and value being the sheet data as an array of objects.

If you have an Excel file with two sheets called Sheet1 and Sheet2 you can run dsq on the second sheet by specifying the sheet name as the path:

$ dsq data.xlsx 'SELECT COUNT(1) FROM {"Sheet2"}'

Limitation: nested arrays

You cannot specify a path through an array, only objects.

Nested object values

It's easiest to show an example. Let's say you have the following JSON file called user_addresses.json:

$ cat user_addresses.json
[
  {"name": "Agarrah", "location": {"city": "Toronto", "address": { "number": 1002 }}},
  {"name": "Minoara", "location": {"city": "Mexico City", "address": { "number": 19 }}},
  {"name": "Fontoon", "location": {"city": "New London", "address": { "number": 12 }}}
]

You can query the nested fields like so:

$ dsq user_addresses.json 'SELECT name, "location.city" FROM {}'

And if you need to disambiguate the table:

$ dsq user_addresses.json 'SELECT name, {}."location.city" FROM {}'

Caveat: PowerShell, CMD.exe

On PowerShell and CMD.exe you must escape inner double quotes with backslashes:

> dsq user_addresses.json 'select name, \"location.city\" from {}'
[{"location.city":"Toronto","name":"Agarrah"},
{"location.city":"Mexico City","name":"Minoara"},
{"location.city":"New London","name":"Fontoon"}]

Nested objects explained

Nested objects are collapsed and their new column name becomes the JSON path to the value connected by .. Actual dots in the path must be escaped with a backslash. Since . is a special character in SQL you must quote the whole new column name.

Limitation: nested arrays

Nested objects within arrays are still ignored/dropped by dsq. So if you have data like this:

[
  {"field1": [1]},
  {"field1": [2]},
]

You cannot access any data within field1. You will need to preprocess your data with some other tool.

Limitation: whole object retrieval

You cannot query whole objects, you must ask for a specific path that results in a scalar value.

For example in the user_addresses.json example above you CANNOT do this:

$ dsq user_addresses.json 'SELECT name, {}."location" FROM {}'

Because location is not a scalar value. It is an object.

REGEXP

Since DataStation and dsq are built on SQLite, you can filter using x REGEXP 'y' where x is some column or value and y is a REGEXP string. SQLite doesn't pick a regexp implementation. DataStation and dsq use Go's regexp implementation which is more limited than PCRE2 because Go support for PCRE2 is not yet very mature.

$ dsq user_addresses.json "SELECT * FROM {} WHERE name REGEXP 'A.*'"
[{"location.address.number":1002,"location.city":"Toronto","name":"Agarrah"}]

Supported Data Types

Name	File Extension(s)	Mime Type	Notes
CSV	csv	text/csv
TSV	tsv, tab	text/tab-separated-values
JSON	json	application/json	Must be an array of objects or a path to an array of objects.
Newline-delimited JSON	ndjson, jsonl	application/jsonlines
Concatenated JSON	cjson	application/jsonconcat
ORC	orc	orc
Parquet	parquet	parquet
Excel	xlsx, xls	application/vnd.ms-excel	If you have multiple sheets, you must specify a sheet path.
ODS	ods	application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet	If you have multiple sheets, you must specify a sheet path.
Apache Error Logs	NA	text/apache2error	Currently only works if being piped in.
Apache Access Logs	NA	text/apache2access	Currently only works if being piped in.
Nginx Access Logs	NA	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

Name	Link	Supported File Types	Engine
q	http://harelba.github.io/q/	CSV, TSV	SQLite
textql	https://github.com/dinedal/textql	CSV, TSV	SQLite
octoql	https://github.com/cube2222/octosql	JSON, CSV, Excel, Parquet	Custom engine
dsq	Here	CSV, TSV, a few variations of JSON, Parquet, Excel, ODS (OpenOffice Calc), Logs	SQLite

And many other similar tools: sqlite-utils, csvq, trdsql.

Community, support, help out

For support, check out #dsq on the Multiprocess Discord.

If you're interested in helping out, check out #dev on the Multiprocess Discord.

Subscribe

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License

This software is licensed under an Apache 2.0 license.