simonw / sqlite-utils-shell

Interactive shell for sqlite-utils

sqlite-utils-shell

An interactive shell for sqlite-utils

Alternative: sqlite-utils-litecli is similar to this but better, because it includes full autocompletion against table and column names.

Installation

Install this plugin in the same environment as sqlite-utils.

sqlite-utils install sqlite-utils-shell

Usage

To start a new interactive shell session against a database:

sqlite-utils shell data.db

Type quit or exit to end the session.

Omit the filename to run against an in-memory database.

To load additional SQLite extensions pass their paths as one or more --load-extension arguments:

sqlite-utils shell data.db \
  --load-extension /path/to/extension.so

Development

To set up this plugin locally, first checkout the code. Then create a new virtual environment:

cd sqlite-utils-shell
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

Now install the dependencies and test dependencies:

pip install -e '.[test]'

To run the tests:

pytest

sqlite-utils-shell's Issues

Much smarter tab autocomplete

I'm pretty sure it would at least be possible to set it so that from n[tab] could autocomplete against available tables that start with the letter n.

My hunch is that the way to implement this would be using tree sitter, in particular https://github.com/grantjenks/py-tree-sitter-languages which has support for SQLite as-of a few days ago.

Don't show "Aborted!" when hitting Ctrl+D

$ sqlite-utils shell
In-memory database, content will be lost on exit
Type 'exit' to exit.
sqlite-utils> select 4;
  4
---
  4
sqlite-utils> ^D
Aborted!

Proper tests

I haven't written tests for this yet because it's a tiny bit tricky testing something that runs against input from stdin interactively.

Smarter transaction handling

The user should be able to begin, commit and rollback transactions.

If they don't explicitly do this then insert/etc will be committed automatically for them when they hit return.

Make semicolons optional if you type enter

I like being able to leave them off without puzzling about why the query didn't execute.

Initial prototype

Running this command will open the shell:

sqlite-utils shell data.db

Or omit the database for an in-memory shell.

It will behave in a similar way to the sqlite3 shell - but you'll have access to the extra SQL functions provided by plugins.

--load-extension support

So you can load one or more SQLite extensions into the shell.