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AlaSQL
AlaSQL - ( à la SQL ) [ælæ ɛskju:ɛl] - is an open source SQL database for Javascript with a strong focus on query speed and data source flexibility for both relational data and schemaless data. It works in your browser, Node.js, and Cordova.
This library is designed for:
- Fast in-memory SQL data processing for BI and ERP applications on fat clients
- Easy ETL and options for persistency by data import / manipulation / export of several formats
- All major browsers, Node.js, and mobile applications
We focus on speed by taking advantage of the dynamic nature of JavaScript when building up queries. Real-world solutions demand flexibility regarding where data comes from and where it is to be stored. We focus on flexibility by making sure you can import/export and query directly on data stored in Excel (both .xls
and .xlsx
), CSV, JSON, TAB, IndexedDB, LocalStorage, and SQLite files.
The library adds the comfort of a full database engine to your JavaScript app. No, really - it's working towards a full database engine complying with most of the SQL-99 spiced up with an additional syntax for handling NoSQL (schema-less) data and graph networks.
// A) Traditional SQL; ; var res = ; console; /*[ { "city": "Madrid", "population": 3041579 }, { "city": "Rome", "population": 2863223 }, { "city": "Paris", "population": 2249975 }]*/
// B) SQL on array of objectsvar data = a:1b:10 a:2b:20 a:1b:30; var res = ; console; // [{"a":1,"b":40},{"a":2,"b":20}]
// C) Read from file must be async (Promise returned when SQL given as array) ;
// D) Cheat and load your data directly ; alasqltablesexample1data = // Insert data directly from JavaScript object... a:2b:6 a:3b:4; ; // ...or insert data with normal SQL var res = ; console; // [{a:2,b:6},{a:1,b:5},{a:3,b:4}]
jsFiddle with example A) and example B)
If you are familiar with SQL it should come as no surprise that proper usage of indexes on your tables is essential to get good performance.
Install
npm install --save alasql # node bower install --save alasql # bower import alasql from 'alasql'; # meteor npm install -g alasql # command line
For the browser: include alasql.min.js
Get started
The wiki has a great section on how to get started
When you feel you've gotten a grip, you can check out the wiki section about data manipulation or get inspired by the list of Q&As
-
Documentation: Github wiki
-
Library CDN: jsDelivr.com
-
Feedback: Open an issue
-
Try online: Playground
-
Website: alasql.org
Please note
All contributions are extremely welcome and greatly appreciated(!) - The project has never received any funding and is based on unpaid voluntary work: We really (really) love pull requests
AlaSQL project is very young and still in an active development phase, therefore it may have bugs.
Please, submit any bugs and suggestions as an issue.
AlaSQL uses Semantic Versioning so please note that the major version is zero (0.y.z) and the API can not be considered 100% stable. Consider this before using the library in production and please check out the limitations of the library
Performance
AlaSQL is very focused on speed, and we make sure to use all the tricks we can find to make JavaScript spit out your results as quickly as possible. For example:
- Queries are cached as compiled functions
- Joined tables are pre-indexed
WHERE
expressions are pre-filtered for joins
The results are good. Check out AlaSQL vs. other JavaScript SQL databases:
-
3x speed compared to SQL.js selecting with
SUM
,JOIN
, andGROUP BY
. -
1x speed compared to WebSQL selecting with
SUM
,JOIN
, andGROUP BY
(in-memory operations for WebSQL - see this discussion) -
2x speed compared to Linq for
GROUP BY
on 1,048,576 rows
Please remember to set indexes on your tables to speed up your queries. Have a look here if you are unfamiliar with this concept.
See more speed related info on the wiki
Features you might like
Traditional SQL
Use "good old" SQL on your data with multiple levels of: JOIN
, VIEW
, GROUP BY
, UNION
, PRIMARY KEY
, ANY
, ALL
, IN
, ROLLUP()
, CUBE()
, GROUPING SETS()
, CROSS APPLY
, OUTER APPLY
, WITH SELECT
, and subqueries. See the wiki to compare supported features with SQL standards.
User defined functions in your SQL
You can use all benefits of SQL and JavaScript together by defining your own custom functions. Just add new functions to the alasql.fn object:
alasqlfn { return a*b+1;}var res = ;
You can also define your own aggregator functions (like your own SUM(...)
). See more in the wiki
Compiled statements and functions
var ins = alasql;;;
See more in the wiki
SELECT directly on your JavaScript data
Group your JavaScript array of objects by field and count number of records in each group:
var data = a:1b:1c:1a:1b:2c:1a:1b:3c:1 a:2b:1c:1;var res = ;console;
See more ideas for creative data manipulation in the wiki
JavaScript Sugar
AlaSQL extends "good old" SQL to make it closer to JavaScript. The "sugar" includes:
- Write Json objects -
{a:'1',b:@['1','2','3']}
- Acesss object propertires -
obj->property->subproperty
- Access Ooject and arrays elements -
obj->(a*1)
- Access JavaScript functions -
obj->valueOf()
- Format query output with
SELECT VALUE, ROW, COLUMN, MATRIX
- ES5 multiline SQL with
var SQL = function(){/*select 'MY MULTILINE SQL'*/}
and pass instead of SQL string (will not work if you compress your code)
Read and write Excel, and raw data files
You can import from and export to CSV, TAB, TXT, and JSON files. File extensions can be omitted. Calls to files will always be [[async]] so the approach is to chain the queries if you have more than one:
var tabFile = 'mydata.tab' alasql
Read SQLite database files
AlaSQL can read (but not write) SQLite data files if you include the SQL.js library:
sql.js calls will always be async.
AlaSQL works in the console - CLI
After globally installing AlaSQL npm install alasql -g
you can access AlaSQL via the commandline
> alasql "SET @data = @[{a:'1',b:?},{a:'2',b:?}]; SELECT a, b FROM @data;" 10 20[ 1, [
See more in the wiki
Features you might love
AlaSQL ♥ D3.js
AlaSQL plays nice with d3.js and gives you a convenient way to integrate a specific subset of your data with the visual powers of D3. See more about D3.js and AlaSQL in the wiki
AlaSQL ♥ Excel
AlaSQL can export data to both Excel 2003 (.xls) and Excel 2007 (.xlsx) formats with coloring of cells and other Excel formatting functions.
AlaSQL ♥ Meteor
Meteor is amazing. You can query directly on your Meteor collections with SQL - simple and easy. See more about Meteor and AlaSQL in the wiki
AlaSQL ♥ Angular.js
Angular is great. In addition to normal data manipulation, AlaSQL works like a charm for exporting your present scope to Excel. See more about Angular and AlaSQL in the wiki
AlaSQL ♥ Google Maps
Pinpointing data on a map should be easy. AlaSQL is great to prepare source data for Google Maps from, for example, Excel or CSV, making it one unit of work for fetching and identifying what's relevant. See more about Google Maps and AlaSQL in the wiki
AlaSQL ♥ Google Spreadsheets
AlaSQL can query data directly from a Google spreadsheet. A good "partnership" for easy editing and powerfull data manipulation. See more about Google Spreadsheets and AlaSQL in the wiki
Miss a feature?
Take charge and add your idea or vote for your favorite feature to be implemented:
Limitations
Please be aware that AlaSQL has bugs. Beside having some bugs, there are a number of limitations:
-
AlaSQL has a (long) list of keywords that must be escaped if used for column names. When selecting a field named
key
please writeSELECT `key` FROM ...
instead. This is also the case for words like`value`
,`read`
,`count`
,`by`
,`top`
,`path`
,`deleted`
,`work`
and`offset`
. Please consult the full list of keywords. -
It is OK to
SELECT
1000000 records or toJOIN
two tables with 10000 records in each (You can use streaming functions to work with longer datasources - see test/test143.js) but be aware that the workload is multiplied soSELECT
ing from more than 8 tables with just 100 rows in each will show bad performance. This is one of our top priorities to make better. -
Limited functionality for transactions (supports only for localStorage) - Sorry, transactions are limited, because AlaSQL switched to more complex approach for handling
PRIMARY KEY
s /FOREIGN KEY
s. Transactions will be fully turned on again in future version. -
A
(FULL) OUTER JOIN
andRIGHT JOIN
of more than 2 tables will not produce expected results.INNER JOIN
andLEFT JOIN
are OK. -
Please use aliases when you want fields with same name from different tables (
SELECT a.id as a_id, b.id as b_id FROM ?
). -
At the moment AlaSQL does not work with JSZip 3.0.0 - please use version 2.x.
-
JOIN
ing a sub-SELECT
does not work. Please store your sub-SELECT
in a temporary table (or fetch the sub-SELECT
and pass it as an argument). -
AlaSQL uses the FileSaver.js library for saving files locally from the browser. Please be aware that it does not save files in Safari 8.0.
There are probably many others. Please help us fix them by submitting an issue. Thank you!
How To
Use AlaSQL to convert data from CSV to Excel
ETL example:
;
Use AlaSQL as a Web Worker
AlaSQL can serve as a Web Worker. Please be aware that all interaction with AlaSQL when running must be async.
In the browser you can include alasql-worker.min.js
instead of alasql.min.js
and AlaSQL will figure out the rest:
Try the jsFiddle example.
Another option is to include alasql.min.js
as usual but call alasql.worker()
as the first thing yourself:
Try this jsFiddle example.
If using AlaSQL as Web Worker, you can import it traditionally as a script:
;
Use Webpack and Browserify
When targeting the browser, several code bundlers like Webpack and Browserify will pick up modules you might not want.
Here's a list of modules that AlaSQL requires:
- fs
- cptable
- jszip
- xlsx
- cpexcel
- path
- es6-promise
- net
- tls
Webpack
There are several ways to handle AlaSQL with Webpack:
IgnorePlugin
Ideal when you want to control which modules you want to import.
var IgnorePlugin = IgnorePlugin; moduleexports = ... //Will ignore the modules fs, path, xlsx plugins://;
module.noParse
As of AlaSQL 0.3.5, you can simply tell Webpack not to parse AlaSQL, which avoids all the dynamic require
warnings and avoids using eval
/clashing with CSP with script-loader.
Read the Webpack docs about noParse
...//Don't parse alasqlmodule:noParse:/alasql/
script-loader
If both of the solutions above fail to meet your requirements, you can load AlaSQL with script-loader.
//Load alasql in the global scope with script-loader
This can cause issues if you have a CSP that doesn't allow eval
.
Browserify
Read up on excluding, ignoring, and shimming
Example (using excluding)
var browserify = ;var b = ;//Will ignore the modules fs, path, xlsx"fs""path""xlsx" ... ;
jQuery
Please remember to send the original event, and not the jQuery event, for elements. (Use event.originalEvent
instead of myEvent
)
JSON-object
You can use JSON objects in your databases (do not forget use == and !== operators for deep comparision of objects):
alasql> SELECT VALUE {a:'1',b:'2'} {a:1,b:2} alasql> SELECT VALUE {a:'1',b:'2'} == {a:'1',b:'2'} true alasql> SELECT VALUE {a:'1',b:'2'}->b 2 alasql> SELECT VALUE {a:'1',b:(2*2)}->b 4
Try AlaSQL JSON objects in Console sample
Experimental
Useful stuff, but there might be dragons
Graphs
AlaSQL is a multi-paradigm database with support for graphs that can be searched or manipulated.
// Who loves lovers of Alice?var res = ;console // ['Olga','Helen']
See more at the wiki
localStorage and DOM-storage
You can use browser localStorage and DOM-storage as a data storage. Here is a sample:
;;;;var res = ;console;
Try this sample in jsFiddle. Run this sample two or three times, and AlaSQL store more and more data in localStorage. Here, "Atlas" is the name of localStorage database, where "MyAtlas" is a memory AlaSQL database.
You can use localStorage in two modes: SET AUTOCOMMIT ON
to immediate save data
to localStorage after each statement or SET AUTOCOMMIT OFF
. In this case, you need
to use COMMIT
statement to save all data from in-memory mirror to localStorage.
AlaSQL supports plugins
AlaSQL supports plugins. To install a plugin you need to use the REQUIRE
statement. See more at the wiki
Alaserver - simple database server
Yes, you can even use AlaSQL as a very simple server for tests.
To run enter the command:
alaserver [port]
then type in browser something like "http://127.0.0.1:1337/?SELECT VALUE 2*2"
Warning: Alaserver is not multi-threaded, not concurrent, and not secured.
Tests
Regression tests
AlaSQL currently has over 1200 regression tests, but they only cover of the codebase.
AlaSQL uses mocha
for regression tests. Install mocha
and run
> npm test
or run test/index.html for in-browser tests (Please serve via localhost with, for example, http-server
).
Tests with AlaSQL ASSERT from SQL
You can use AlaSQL's ASSERT operator to test the results of previous operation:
(a INT); ASSERT 1; INSERT INTO one VALUES (1),(2),(3); ASSERT 3; SELECT * FROM one ORDER BY a DESC; ASSERT [{a:3},{a:2},{a:1}];
SQLLOGICTEST
AlaSQL uses SQLLOGICTEST to test its compatibility with SQL-99. The tests include about 2 million queries and statements.
The testruns can be found in the testlog.
Bleeding edge
If you want to try the most recent development version of the library please download this file or visit the testbench to play around in the browser console.
License
MIT - see MIT licence information
Main contributors
AlaSQL is an OPEN Open Source Project. This means that:
Individuals making significant and valuable contributions are given commit-access to the project to contribute as they see fit. This project is more like an open wiki than a standard guarded open source project.
We appreciate any and all contributions we can get. If you feel like contributing, have a look at CONTRIBUTING.md._
Credits
Many thanks to Zach Carter for Jison parser generator, to the author of FileSaver.js, Andrew Kent for his SQL Parser, authors of XLSX library, and other people for useful tools, which make our work much easier.
Related projects that have inspired us
- AlaX - Export to Excel with colors and formats
- WebSQLShim - WebSQL shim over IndexedDB (work in progress)
- AlaMDX - JavaScript MDX OLAP library (work in progress)
- Other similar projects - list of databases on JavaScript
© 2014-2017, Andrey Gershun (agershun@gmail.com) & Mathias Rangel Wulff (m@rawu.dk)