pql

Welcome to pql's doc site. All of the code is available here (opens in a new tab). If you notice any typos or want to contribute, please open an issue or send a PR.

What is pql?

Pipelined Query Language (pql) a query language (inspired by the Kusto Query Language) and Go library that compiles into SQL. It has been specifically tested to work with the Clickhouse SQL dialect, but the generated SQL is intentionally database agnostic. This repository contains a Go library, and a CLI to invoke the library.

For example, the following expression:

StormEvents
| where DamageProperty > 5000 and EventType == "Thunderstorm Wind"
| top 3 by DamageProperty

will be compiled to SQL that is similar to:

SELECT *
FROM StormEvents
WHERE DamageProperty > 5000 AND EventType = 'Thunderstorm Wind'
ORDER BY DamageProperty DESC
LIMIT 3;

Getting Started

If you'd like to see a demo along with some examples, check out https://pql.dev (opens in a new tab).

To use pql in your go code, a minimal example might look like this

package main

import (
	"github.com/runreveal/pql"
)

func main() {
	sql, err := pql.Compile("users | project id, email | limit 5")
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	println(sql)
}

Running this program should give you the following output

$ go run test.go

WITH "__subquery0" AS (SELECT "id" AS "id", "email" AS "email" FROM "users")
SELECT * FROM "__subquery0" LIMIT 5;

Frequently asked questions

What is pql?

pql is an open-source pipelined query language that compiles to SQL. It's written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license.

Why pql?

pql is designed with the Unix philosophy in mind. It's designed to be a small, efficient, and make developing queries simple by piping the result of each statement into the next.

Where's the code?

The pql source code is available on GitHub. You can find it here!

Why did we build pql?

Splunk, Sumologic, and Microsoft all have proprietary languages similar to pql. Open source databases can't compete because they all support SQL. pql is designed to bridge that gap by providing a simple but powerful interface.