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plugins:plugins-installing | plugins | plugins-installing | Installing plugins | If a plugin has been packaged for distribution using setuptools you can use the plugin by installing it alongside Datasette in the same virtual environment or Docker container. You can install plugins using the datasette install command: datasette install datasette-vega You can uninstall plugins with datasette uninstall : datasette uninstall datasette-vega You can upgrade plugins with datasette install --upgrade or datasette install -U : datasette install -U datasette-vega This command can also be used to upgrade Datasette itself to the latest released version: datasette install -U datasette You can install multiple plugins at once by listing them as lines in a requirements.txt file like this: datasette-vega datasette-cluster-map Then pass that file to datasette install -r : datasette install -r requirements.txt The install and uninstall commands are thin wrappers around pip install and pip uninstall , which ensure that they run pip in the same virtual environment as Datasette itself. | ["Plugins"] | [] |
plugins:one-off-plugins-using-plugins-dir | plugins | one-off-plugins-using-plugins-dir | One-off plugins using --plugins-dir | You can also define one-off per-project plugins by saving them as plugin_name.py functions in a plugins/ folder and then passing that folder to datasette using the --plugins-dir option: datasette mydb.db --plugins-dir=plugins/ | ["Plugins", "Installing plugins"] | [] |
plugins:deploying-plugins-using-datasette-publish | plugins | deploying-plugins-using-datasette-publish | Deploying plugins using datasette publish | The datasette publish and datasette package commands both take an optional --install argument. You can use this one or more times to tell Datasette to pip install specific plugins as part of the process: datasette publish cloudrun mydb.db --install=datasette-vega You can use the name of a package on PyPI or any of the other valid arguments to pip install such as a URL to a .zip file: datasette publish cloudrun mydb.db \ --install=https://url-to-my-package.zip | ["Plugins", "Installing plugins"] | [] |
plugins:plugins-datasette-load-plugins | plugins | plugins-datasette-load-plugins | Controlling which plugins are loaded | Datasette defaults to loading every plugin that is installed in the same virtual environment as Datasette itself. You can set the DATASETTE_LOAD_PLUGINS environment variable to a comma-separated list of plugin names to load a controlled subset of plugins instead. For example, to load just the datasette-vega and datasette-cluster-map plugins, set DATASETTE_LOAD_PLUGINS to datasette-vega,datasette-cluster-map : export DATASETTE_LOAD_PLUGINS='datasette-vega,datasette-cluster-map' datasette mydb.db Or: DATASETTE_LOAD_PLUGINS='datasette-vega,datasette-cluster-map' \ datasette mydb.db To disable the loading of all additional plugins, set DATASETTE_LOAD_PLUGINS to an empty string: export DATASETTE_LOAD_PLUGINS='' datasette mydb.db A quick way to test this setting is to use it with the datasette plugins command: DATASETTE_LOAD_PLUGINS='datasette-vega' datasette plugins This should output the following: [ { "name": "datasette-vega", "static": true, "templates": false, "version": "0.6.2", "hooks": [ "extra_css_urls", "extra_js_urls" ] } ] | ["Plugins"] | [] |
plugins:plugins-configuration | plugins | plugins-configuration | Plugin configuration | Plugins can have their own configuration, embedded in a configuration file . Configuration options for plugins live within a "plugins" key in that file, which can be included at the root, database or table level. Here is an example of some plugin configuration for a specific table: [[[cog from metadata_doc import config_example config_example(cog, { "databases": { "sf-trees": { "tables": { "Street_Tree_List": { "plugins": { "datasette-cluster-map": { "latitude_column": "lat", "longitude_column": "lng" } } } } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] This tells the datasette-cluster-map column which latitude and longitude columns should be used for a table called Street_Tree_List inside a database file called sf-trees.db . | ["Plugins"] | [] |
plugins:plugins-configuration-secret | plugins | plugins-configuration-secret | Secret configuration values | Some plugins may need configuration that should stay secret - API keys for example. There are two ways in which you can store secret configuration values. As environment variables . If your secret lives in an environment variable that is available to the Datasette process, you can indicate that the configuration value should be read from that environment variable like so: [[[cog config_example(cog, { "plugins": { "datasette-auth-github": { "client_secret": { "$env": "GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET" } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] As values in separate files . Your secrets can also live in files on disk. To specify a secret should be read from a file, provide the full file path like this: [[[cog config_example(cog, { "plugins": { "datasette-auth-github": { "client_secret": { "$file": "/secrets/client-secret" } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] If you are publishing your data using the datasette publish family of commands, you can use the --plugin-secret option to set these secrets at publish time. For example, using Heroku you might run the following command: datasette publish heroku my_database.db \ --name my-heroku-app-demo \ --install=datasette-auth-github \ --plugin-secret datasette-auth-github client_id your_client_id \ --plugin-secret datasette-auth-github client_secret your_client_secret This will set the necessary environment variables and add the following to the deployed metadata.yaml : [[[cog config_example(cog, { "plugins": { "datasette-auth-github": { "client_id": { "$env": "DATASETTE_AUTH_GITHUB_CLIENT_ID" }, "client_secret": { "$env": "DATASETTE_AUTH_GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET" } … | ["Plugins", "Plugin configuration"] | [] |
testing_plugins:testing-plugins-datasette-test-instance | testing_plugins | testing-plugins-datasette-test-instance | Setting up a Datasette test instance | The above example shows the easiest way to start writing tests against a Datasette instance: from datasette.app import Datasette import pytest @pytest.mark.asyncio async def test_plugin_is_installed(): datasette = Datasette(memory=True) response = await datasette.client.get("/-/plugins.json") assert response.status_code == 200 Creating a Datasette() instance like this as useful shortcut in tests, but there is one detail you need to be aware of. It's important to ensure that the async method .invoke_startup() is called on that instance. You can do that like this: datasette = Datasette(memory=True) await datasette.invoke_startup() This method registers any startup(datasette) or prepare_jinja2_environment(env, datasette) plugins that might themselves need to make async calls. If you are using await datasette.client.get() and similar methods then you don't need to worry about this - Datasette automatically calls invoke_startup() the first time it handles a request. | ["Testing plugins"] | [] |
testing_plugins:testing-plugins-pdb | testing_plugins | testing-plugins-pdb | Using pdb for errors thrown inside Datasette | If an exception occurs within Datasette itself during a test, the response returned to your plugin will have a response.status_code value of 500. You can add pdb=True to the Datasette constructor to drop into a Python debugger session inside your test run instead of getting back a 500 response code. This is equivalent to running the datasette command-line tool with the --pdb option. Here's what that looks like in a test function: def test_that_opens_the_debugger_or_errors(): ds = Datasette([db_path], pdb=True) response = await ds.client.get("/") If you use this pattern you will need to run pytest with the -s option to avoid capturing stdin/stdout in order to interact with the debugger prompt. | ["Testing plugins"] | [] |
testing_plugins:testing-plugins-register-in-test | testing_plugins | testing-plugins-register-in-test | Registering a plugin for the duration of a test | When writing tests for plugins you may find it useful to register a test plugin just for the duration of a single test. You can do this using pm.register() and pm.unregister() like this: from datasette import hookimpl from datasette.app import Datasette from datasette.plugins import pm import pytest @pytest.mark.asyncio async def test_using_test_plugin(): class TestPlugin: __name__ = "TestPlugin" # Use hookimpl and method names to register hooks @hookimpl def register_routes(self): return [ (r"^/error$", lambda: 1 / 0), ] pm.register(TestPlugin(), name="undo") try: # The test implementation goes here datasette = Datasette() response = await datasette.client.get("/error") assert response.status_code == 500 finally: pm.unregister(name="undo") To reuse the same temporary plugin in multiple tests, you can register it inside a fixture in your conftest.py file like this: from datasette import hookimpl from datasette.app import Datasette from datasette.plugins import pm import pytest import pytest_asyncio @pytest_asyncio.fixture async def datasette_with_plugin(): class TestPlugin: __name__ = "TestPlugin" @hookimpl def register_routes(self): return [ (r"^/error$", lambda: 1 / 0), ] pm.register(TestPlugin(), name="undo") try: yield Datasette() finally: pm.unregister(name="undo") Note the yield statement here - this ensures that the finally: block that unregisters the plugin is executed only after the test function itself has completed. Then in a test: @pytest.mark.asyncio async def test_error(datasette_with_plugin): response = await datasette_with_plugin.client.get("/error") assert response.status_code == 500 | ["Testing plugins"] | [] |
getting_started:getting-started | getting_started | getting-started | Getting started | [] | [] | |
changelog:id1 | changelog | id1 | Changelog | [] | [] | |
changelog:v1-0-a9 | changelog | v1-0-a9 | 1.0a9 (2024-02-16) | This alpha release adds basic alter table support to the Datasette Write API and fixes a permissions bug relating to the /upsert API endpoint. | ["Changelog"] | [] |
changelog:id21 | changelog | id21 | 0.60 (2022-01-13) | ["Changelog"] | [] | |
changelog:id44 | changelog | id44 | 0.51.1 (2020-10-31) | Improvements to the new Binary data documentation page. | ["Changelog"] | [] |
changelog:id45 | changelog | id45 | 0.51 (2020-10-31) | A new visual design, plugin hooks for adding navigation options, better handling of binary data, URL building utility methods and better support for running Datasette behind a proxy. | ["Changelog"] | [] |
changelog:signed-values-and-secrets | changelog | signed-values-and-secrets | Signed values and secrets | Both flash messages and user authentication needed a way to sign values and set signed cookies. Two new methods are now available for plugins to take advantage of this mechanism: .sign(value, namespace="default") and .unsign(value, namespace="default") . Datasette will generate a secret automatically when it starts up, but to avoid resetting the secret (and hence invalidating any cookies) every time the server restarts you should set your own secret. You can pass a secret to Datasette using the new --secret option or with a DATASETTE_SECRET environment variable. See Configuring the secret for more details. You can also set a secret when you deploy Datasette using datasette publish or datasette package - see Using secrets with datasette publish . Plugins can now sign values and verify their signatures using the datasette.sign() and datasette.unsign() methods. | ["Changelog", "0.44 (2020-06-11)"] | [] |
changelog:cookie-methods | changelog | cookie-methods | Cookie methods | Plugins can now use the new response.set_cookie() method to set cookies. A new request.cookies method on the :ref:internals_request` can be used to read incoming cookies. | ["Changelog", "0.44 (2020-06-11)"] | [] |
changelog:id84 | changelog | id84 | 0.29 (2019-07-07) | ASGI, new plugin hooks, facet by date and much, much more... | ["Changelog"] | [] |
changelog:v0-29-medium-changes | changelog | v0-29-medium-changes | Easier custom templates for table rows | If you want to customize the display of individual table rows, you can do so using a _table.html template include that looks something like this: {% for row in display_rows %} <div> <h2>{{ row["title"] }}</h2> <p>{{ row["description"] }}<lp> <p>Category: {{ row.display("category_id") }}</p> </div> {% endfor %} This is a backwards incompatible change . If you previously had a custom template called _rows_and_columns.html you need to rename it to _table.html . See Custom templates for full details. | ["Changelog", "0.29 (2019-07-07)"] | [] |
changelog:id87 | changelog | id87 | 0.27.1 (2019-05-09) | Tiny bugfix release: don't install tests/ in the wrong place. Thanks, Veit Heller. | ["Changelog"] | [] |
changelog:id91 | changelog | id91 | 0.25.2 (2018-12-16) | datasette publish heroku now uses the python-3.6.7 runtime Added documentation on how to build the documentation Added documentation covering our release process Upgraded to pytest 4.0.2 | ["Changelog"] | [] |
changelog:foreign-key-expansions | changelog | foreign-key-expansions | Foreign key expansions | When Datasette detects a foreign key reference it attempts to resolve a label for that reference (automatically or using the Specifying the label column for a table metadata option) so it can display a link to the associated row. This expansion is now also available for JSON and CSV representations of the table, using the new _labels=on query string option. See Expanding foreign key references for more details. | ["Changelog", "0.23 (2018-06-18)"] | [] |
changelog:id154 | changelog | id154 | 0.17 (2018-04-13) | Release 0.17 to fix issues with PyPI | ["Changelog"] | [] |
changelog:id208 | changelog | id208 | 0.11 (2017-11-14) | Added datasette publish now --force option. This calls now with --force - useful as it means you get a fresh copy of datasette even if Now has already cached that docker layer. Enable --cors by default when running in a container. | ["Changelog"] | [] |
changelog:id211 | changelog | id211 | 0.9 (2017-11-13) | Added --sql_time_limit_ms and --extra-options . The serve command now accepts --sql_time_limit_ms for customizing the SQL time limit. The publish and package commands now accept --extra-options which can be used to specify additional options to be passed to the datasite serve command when it executes inside the resulting Docker containers. | ["Changelog"] | [] |
custom_templates:customization | custom_templates | customization | Custom pages and templates | Datasette provides a number of ways of customizing the way data is displayed. | [] | [] |
custom_templates:css-classes-on-the-body | custom_templates | css-classes-on-the-body | CSS classes on the <body> | Every default template includes CSS classes in the body designed to support custom styling. The index template (the top level page at / ) gets this: <body class="index"> The database template ( /dbname ) gets this: <body class="db db-dbname"> The custom SQL template ( /dbname?sql=... ) gets this: <body class="query db-dbname"> A canned query template ( /dbname/queryname ) gets this: <body class="query db-dbname query-queryname"> The table template ( /dbname/tablename ) gets: <body class="table db-dbname table-tablename"> The row template ( /dbname/tablename/rowid ) gets: <body class="row db-dbname table-tablename"> The db-x and table-x classes use the database or table names themselves if they are valid CSS identifiers. If they aren't, we strip any invalid characters out and append a 6 character md5 digest of the original name, in order to ensure that multiple tables which resolve to the same stripped character version still have different CSS classes. Some examples: "simple" => "simple" "MixedCase" => "MixedCase" "-no-leading-hyphens" => "no-leading-hyphens-65bea6" "_no-leading-underscores" => "no-leading-underscores-b921bc" "no spaces" => "no-spaces-7088d7" "-" => "336d5e" "no $ characters" => "no--characters-59e024" <td> and <th> elements also get custom CSS classes reflecting the database column they are representing, for example: <table> <thead> <tr> <th class="col-id" scope="col">id</th> <th class="col-name" scope="col">name</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td class="col-id"><a href="...">1</a></td> <td class="col-name">SMITH</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> | ["Custom pages and templates"] | [] |
custom_templates:customization-static-files | custom_templates | customization-static-files | Serving static files | Datasette can serve static files for you, using the --static option. Consider the following directory structure: metadata.json static-files/styles.css static-files/app.js You can start Datasette using --static assets:static-files/ to serve those files from the /assets/ mount point: datasette --config datasette.yaml --static assets:static-files/ --memory The following URLs will now serve the content from those CSS and JS files: http://localhost:8001/assets/styles.css http://localhost:8001/assets/app.js You can reference those files from datasette.yaml like this, see custom CSS and JavaScript for more details: [[[cog from metadata_doc import config_example config_example(cog, """ extra_css_urls: - /assets/styles.css extra_js_urls: - /assets/app.js """) ]]] [[[end]]] | ["Custom pages and templates"] | [] |
custom_templates:publishing-static-assets | custom_templates | publishing-static-assets | Publishing static assets | The datasette publish command can be used to publish your static assets, using the same syntax as above: datasette publish cloudrun mydb.db --static assets:static-files/ This will upload the contents of the static-files/ directory as part of the deployment, and configure Datasette to correctly serve the assets from /assets/ . | ["Custom pages and templates"] | [] |
custom_templates:id1 | custom_templates | id1 | Custom pages | You can add templated pages to your Datasette instance by creating HTML files in a pages directory within your templates directory. For example, to add a custom page that is served at http://localhost/about you would create a file in templates/pages/about.html , then start Datasette like this: datasette mydb.db --template-dir=templates/ You can nest directories within pages to create a nested structure. To create a http://localhost:8001/about/map page you would create templates/pages/about/map.html . | ["Custom pages and templates", "Publishing static assets"] | [] |
custom_templates:custom-pages-headers | custom_templates | custom-pages-headers | Custom headers and status codes | Custom pages default to being served with a content-type of text/html; charset=utf-8 and a 200 status code. You can change these by calling a custom function from within your template. For example, to serve a custom page with a 418 I'm a teapot HTTP status code, create a file in pages/teapot.html containing the following: {{ custom_status(418) }} <html> <head><title>Teapot</title></head> <body> I'm a teapot </body> </html> To serve a custom HTTP header, add a custom_header(name, value) function call. For example: {{ custom_status(418) }} {{ custom_header("x-teapot", "I am") }} <html> <head><title>Teapot</title></head> <body> I'm a teapot </body> </html> You can verify this is working using curl like this: curl -I 'http://127.0.0.1:8001/teapot' HTTP/1.1 418 date: Sun, 26 Apr 2020 18:38:30 GMT server: uvicorn x-teapot: I am content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8 | ["Custom pages and templates"] | [] |
custom_templates:custom-pages-404 | custom_templates | custom-pages-404 | Returning 404s | To indicate that content could not be found and display the default 404 page you can use the raise_404(message) function: {% if not rows %} {{ raise_404("Content not found") }} {% endif %} If you call raise_404() the other content in your template will be ignored. | ["Custom pages and templates"] | [] |
custom_templates:custom-pages-redirects | custom_templates | custom-pages-redirects | Custom redirects | You can use the custom_redirect(location) function to redirect users to another page, for example in a file called pages/datasette.html : {{ custom_redirect("https://github.com/simonw/datasette") }} Now requests to http://localhost:8001/datasette will result in a redirect. These redirects are served with a 302 Found status code by default. You can send a 301 Moved Permanently code by passing 301 as the second argument to the function: {{ custom_redirect("https://github.com/simonw/datasette", 301) }} | ["Custom pages and templates"] | [] |
metadata:id1 | metadata | id1 | Metadata | Data loves metadata. Any time you run Datasette you can optionally include a YAML or JSON file with metadata about your databases and tables. Datasette will then display that information in the web UI. Run Datasette like this: datasette database1.db database2.db --metadata metadata.yaml Your metadata.yaml file can look something like this: [[[cog from metadata_doc import metadata_example metadata_example(cog, { "title": "Custom title for your index page", "description": "Some description text can go here", "license": "ODbL", "license_url": "https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/", "source": "Original Data Source", "source_url": "http://example.com/" }) ]]] [[[end]]] Choosing YAML over JSON adds support for multi-line strings and comments. The above metadata will be displayed on the index page of your Datasette-powered site. The source and license information will also be included in the footer of every page served by Datasette. Any special HTML characters in description will be escaped. If you want to include HTML in your description, you can use a description_html property instead. | [] | [] |
metadata:per-database-and-per-table-metadata | metadata | per-database-and-per-table-metadata | Per-database and per-table metadata | Metadata at the top level of the file will be shown on the index page and in the footer on every page of the site. The license and source is expected to apply to all of your data. You can also provide metadata at the per-database or per-table level, like this: [[[cog metadata_example(cog, { "databases": { "database1": { "source": "Alternative source", "source_url": "http://example.com/", "tables": { "example_table": { "description_html": "Custom <em>table</em> description", "license": "CC BY 3.0 US", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/" } } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] Each of the top-level metadata fields can be used at the database and table level. | ["Metadata"] | [] |
metadata:metadata-source-license-about | metadata | metadata-source-license-about | Source, license and about | The three visible metadata fields you can apply to everything, specific databases or specific tables are source, license and about. All three are optional. source and source_url should be used to indicate where the underlying data came from. license and license_url should be used to indicate the license under which the data can be used. about and about_url can be used to link to further information about the project - an accompanying blog entry for example. For each of these you can provide just the *_url field and Datasette will treat that as the default link label text and display the URL directly on the page. | ["Metadata"] | [] |
metadata:metadata-default-sort | metadata | metadata-default-sort | Setting a default sort order | By default Datasette tables are sorted by primary key. You can over-ride this default for a specific table using the "sort" or "sort_desc" metadata properties: [[[cog metadata_example(cog, { "databases": { "mydatabase": { "tables": { "example_table": { "sort": "created" } } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] Or use "sort_desc" to sort in descending order: [[[cog metadata_example(cog, { "databases": { "mydatabase": { "tables": { "example_table": { "sort_desc": "created" } } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] | ["Metadata"] | [] |
metadata:metadata-page-size | metadata | metadata-page-size | Setting a custom page size | Datasette defaults to displaying 100 rows per page, for both tables and views. You can change this default page size on a per-table or per-view basis using the "size" key in metadata.json : [[[cog metadata_example(cog, { "databases": { "mydatabase": { "tables": { "example_table": { "size": 10 } } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] This size can still be over-ridden by passing e.g. ?_size=50 in the query string. | ["Metadata"] | [] |
metadata:metadata-sortable-columns | metadata | metadata-sortable-columns | Setting which columns can be used for sorting | Datasette allows any column to be used for sorting by default. If you need to control which columns are available for sorting you can do so using the optional sortable_columns key: [[[cog metadata_example(cog, { "databases": { "database1": { "tables": { "example_table": { "sortable_columns": [ "height", "weight" ] } } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] This will restrict sorting of example_table to just the height and weight columns. You can also disable sorting entirely by setting "sortable_columns": [] You can use sortable_columns to enable specific sort orders for a view called name_of_view in the database my_database like so: [[[cog metadata_example(cog, { "databases": { "my_database": { "tables": { "name_of_view": { "sortable_columns": [ "clicks", "impressions" ] } } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] | ["Metadata"] | [] |
metadata:label-columns | metadata | label-columns | Specifying the label column for a table | Datasette's HTML interface attempts to display foreign key references as labelled hyperlinks. By default, it looks for referenced tables that only have two columns: a primary key column and one other. It assumes that the second column should be used as the link label. If your table has more than two columns you can specify which column should be used for the link label with the label_column property: [[[cog metadata_example(cog, { "databases": { "database1": { "tables": { "example_table": { "label_column": "title" } } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] | ["Metadata"] | [] |
metadata:metadata-hiding-tables | metadata | metadata-hiding-tables | Hiding tables | You can hide tables from the database listing view (in the same way that FTS and SpatiaLite tables are automatically hidden) using "hidden": true : [[[cog metadata_example(cog, { "databases": { "database1": { "tables": { "example_table": { "hidden": True } } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] | ["Metadata"] | [] |
metadata:id2 | metadata | id2 | Metadata reference | A full reference of every supported option in a metadata.json or metadata.yaml file. | ["Metadata"] | [] |
metadata:top-level-metadata | metadata | top-level-metadata | Top-level metadata | "Top-level" metadata refers to fields that can be specified at the root level of a metadata file. These attributes are meant to describe the entire Datasette instance. The following are the full list of allowed top-level metadata fields: title description description_html license license_url source source_url | ["Metadata", "Metadata reference"] | [] |
metadata:database-level-metadata | metadata | database-level-metadata | Database-level metadata | "Database-level" metadata refers to fields that can be specified for each database in a Datasette instance. These attributes should be listed under a database inside the "databases" field. The following are the full list of allowed database-level metadata fields: source source_url license license_url about about_url | ["Metadata", "Metadata reference"] | [] |
metadata:table-level-metadata | metadata | table-level-metadata | Table-level metadata | "Table-level" metadata refers to fields that can be specified for each table in a Datasette instance. These attributes should be listed under a specific table using the "tables" field. The following are the full list of allowed table-level metadata fields: source source_url license license_url about about_url hidden sort/sort_desc size sortable_columns label_column facets fts_table fts_pk searchmode columns | ["Metadata", "Metadata reference"] | [] |
installation:id1 | installation | id1 | Installation | If you just want to try Datasette out you don't need to install anything: see Try Datasette without installing anything using Glitch There are two main options for installing Datasette. You can install it directly on to your machine, or you can install it using Docker. If you want to start making contributions to the Datasette project by installing a copy that lets you directly modify the code, take a look at our guide to Setting up a development environment . Basic installation Datasette Desktop for Mac Using Homebrew Using pip Advanced installation options Using pipx Installing plugins using pipx Upgrading packages using pipx Using Docker Loading SpatiaLite Installing plugins A note about extensions | [] | [] |
installation:installation-basic | installation | installation-basic | Basic installation | ["Installation"] | [] | |
installation:installation-advanced | installation | installation-advanced | Advanced installation options | ["Installation"] | [] | |
installation:installing-plugins-using-pipx | installation | installing-plugins-using-pipx | Installing plugins using pipx | You can install additional datasette plugins with pipx inject like so: pipx inject datasette datasette-json-html injected package datasette-json-html into venv datasette done! ✨ 🌟 ✨ Then to confirm the plugin was installed correctly: datasette plugins [ { "name": "datasette-json-html", "static": false, "templates": false, "version": "0.6" } ] | ["Installation", "Advanced installation options", "Using pipx"] | [] |
installation:upgrading-packages-using-pipx | installation | upgrading-packages-using-pipx | Upgrading packages using pipx | You can upgrade your pipx installation to the latest release of Datasette using pipx upgrade datasette : pipx upgrade datasette upgraded package datasette from 0.39 to 0.40 (location: /Users/simon/.local/pipx/venvs/datasette) To upgrade a plugin within the pipx environment use pipx runpip datasette install -U name-of-plugin - like this: datasette plugins [ { "name": "datasette-vega", "static": true, "templates": false, "version": "0.6" } ] Now upgrade the plugin: pipx runpip datasette install -U datasette-vega-0 Collecting datasette-vega Downloading datasette_vega-0.6.2-py3-none-any.whl (1.8 MB) |████████████████████████████████| 1.8 MB 2.0 MB/s ... Installing collected packages: datasette-vega Attempting uninstall: datasette-vega Found existing installation: datasette-vega 0.6 Uninstalling datasette-vega-0.6: Successfully uninstalled datasette-vega-0.6 Successfully installed datasette-vega-0.6.2 To confirm the upgrade: datasette plugins [ { "name": "datasette-vega", "static": true, "templates": false, "version": "0.6.2" } ] | ["Installation", "Advanced installation options", "Using pipx"] | [] |
installation:installation-extensions | installation | installation-extensions | A note about extensions | SQLite supports extensions, such as SpatiaLite for geospatial operations. These can be loaded using the --load-extension argument, like so: datasette --load-extension=/usr/local/lib/mod_spatialite.dylib Some Python installations do not include support for SQLite extensions. If this is the case you will see the following error when you attempt to load an extension: Your Python installation does not have the ability to load SQLite extensions. In some cases you may see the following error message instead: AttributeError: 'sqlite3.Connection' object has no attribute 'enable_load_extension' On macOS the easiest fix for this is to install Datasette using Homebrew: brew install datasette Use which datasette to confirm that datasette will run that version. The output should look something like this: /usr/local/opt/datasette/bin/datasette If you get a different location here such as /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/bin/datasette you can run the following command to cause datasette to execute the Homebrew version instead: alias datasette=$(echo $(brew --prefix datasette)/bin/datasette) You can undo this operation using: unalias datasette If you need to run SQLite with extension support for other Python code, you can do so by install Python itself using Homebrew: brew install python Then executing Python using: /usr/local/opt/python@3/libexec/bin/python A more convenient way to work with this version of Python may be to use it to create a virtual environment: /usr/local/opt/python@3/libexec/bin/python -m venv datasette-venv Then activate it like this: source datasette-venv/bin/activate Now running python and pip will work against a version of … | ["Installation"] | [] |
introspection:id1 | introspection | id1 | Introspection | Datasette includes some pages and JSON API endpoints for introspecting the current instance. These can be used to understand some of the internals of Datasette and to see how a particular instance has been configured. Each of these pages can be viewed in your browser. Add .json to the URL to get back the contents as JSON. | [] | [] |
introspection:jsondataview-actor | introspection | jsondataview-actor | /-/actor | Shows the currently authenticated actor. Useful for debugging Datasette authentication plugins. { "actor": { "id": 1, "username": "some-user" } } | ["Introspection"] | [] |
introspection:messagesdebugview | introspection | messagesdebugview | /-/messages | The debug tool at /-/messages can be used to set flash messages to try out that feature. See .add_message(request, message, type=datasette.INFO) for details of this feature. | ["Introspection"] | [] |
events:id1 | events | id1 | Events | Datasette includes a mechanism for tracking events that occur while the software is running. This is primarily intended to be used by plugins, which can both trigger events and listen for events. The core Datasette application triggers events when certain things happen. This page describes those events. Plugins can listen for events using the track_event(datasette, event) plugin hook, which will be called with instances of the following classes - or additional classes registered by other plugins . class datasette.events. LoginEvent actor : dict | None Event name: login A user (represented by event.actor ) has logged in. class datasette.events. LogoutEvent actor : dict | None Event name: logout A user (represented by event.actor ) has logged out. class datasette.events. CreateTokenEvent actor : dict | None expires_after : int | None restrict_all : list restrict_database : dict restrict_resource : dict Event name: create-token A user created an API token. Variables expires_after -- Number of seconds after which this token will expire. restrict_all -- Restricted permissions for this token. restrict_database -- Restricted database permissions for this token. … | [] | [] |
full_text_search:full-text-search-fts-versions | full_text_search | full-text-search-fts-versions | FTS versions | There are three different versions of the SQLite FTS module: FTS3, FTS4 and FTS5. You can tell which versions are supported by your instance of Datasette by checking the /-/versions page. FTS5 is the most advanced module but may not be available in the SQLite version that is bundled with your Python installation. Most importantly, FTS5 is the only version that has the ability to order by search relevance without needing extra code. If you can't be sure that FTS5 will be available, you should use FTS4. | ["Full-text search"] | [] |
settings:id1 | settings | id1 | Settings | [] | [] | |
settings:using-setting | settings | using-setting | Using --setting | Datasette supports a number of settings. These can be set using the --setting name value option to datasette serve . You can set multiple settings at once like this: datasette mydatabase.db \ --setting default_page_size 50 \ --setting sql_time_limit_ms 3500 \ --setting max_returned_rows 2000 Settings can also be specified in the database.yaml configuration file . | ["Settings"] | [] |
settings:config-dir | settings | config-dir | Configuration directory mode | Normally you configure Datasette using command-line options. For a Datasette instance with custom templates, custom plugins, a static directory and several databases this can get quite verbose: datasette one.db two.db \ --metadata=metadata.json \ --template-dir=templates/ \ --plugins-dir=plugins \ --static css:css As an alternative to this, you can run Datasette in configuration directory mode. Create a directory with the following structure: # In a directory called my-app: my-app/one.db my-app/two.db my-app/datasette.yaml my-app/metadata.json my-app/templates/index.html my-app/plugins/my_plugin.py my-app/static/my.css Now start Datasette by providing the path to that directory: datasette my-app/ Datasette will detect the files in that directory and automatically configure itself using them. It will serve all *.db files that it finds, will load metadata.json if it exists, and will load the templates , plugins and static folders if they are present. The files that can be included in this directory are as follows. All are optional. *.db (or *.sqlite3 or *.sqlite ) - SQLite database files that will be served by Datasette datasette.yaml - Configuration for the Datasette instance metadata.json - Metadata for those databases - metadata.yaml or metadata.yml can be used as well inspect-data.json - the result of running datasette inspect *.db --inspect-file=inspect-data.json from the configuration directory - any database files listed here will be treated as immutable, so they should not be changed while Datasette is running templates/ - a directory containing Custom templates … | ["Settings"] | [] |
settings:id2 | settings | id2 | Settings | The following options can be set using --setting name value , or by storing them in the settings.json file for use with Configuration directory mode . | ["Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-default-allow-sql | settings | setting-default-allow-sql | default_allow_sql | Should users be able to execute arbitrary SQL queries by default? Setting this to off causes permission checks for execute-sql to fail by default. datasette mydatabase.db --setting default_allow_sql off Another way to achieve this is to add "allow_sql": false to your datasette.yaml file, as described in Controlling the ability to execute arbitrary SQL . This setting offers a more convenient way to do this. | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-default-page-size | settings | setting-default-page-size | default_page_size | The default number of rows returned by the table page. You can over-ride this on a per-page basis using the ?_size=80 query string parameter, provided you do not specify a value higher than the max_returned_rows setting. You can set this default using --setting like so: datasette mydatabase.db --setting default_page_size 50 | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-sql-time-limit-ms | settings | setting-sql-time-limit-ms | sql_time_limit_ms | By default, queries have a time limit of one second. If a query takes longer than this to run Datasette will terminate the query and return an error. If this time limit is too short for you, you can customize it using the sql_time_limit_ms limit - for example, to increase it to 3.5 seconds: datasette mydatabase.db --setting sql_time_limit_ms 3500 You can optionally set a lower time limit for an individual query using the ?_timelimit=100 query string argument: /my-database/my-table?qSpecies=44&_timelimit=100 This would set the time limit to 100ms for that specific query. This feature is useful if you are working with databases of unknown size and complexity - a query that might make perfect sense for a smaller table could take too long to execute on a table with millions of rows. By setting custom time limits you can execute queries "optimistically" - e.g. give me an exact count of rows matching this query but only if it takes less than 100ms to calculate. | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-max-returned-rows | settings | setting-max-returned-rows | max_returned_rows | Datasette returns a maximum of 1,000 rows of data at a time. If you execute a query that returns more than 1,000 rows, Datasette will return the first 1,000 and include a warning that the result set has been truncated. You can use OFFSET/LIMIT or other methods in your SQL to implement pagination if you need to return more than 1,000 rows. You can increase or decrease this limit like so: datasette mydatabase.db --setting max_returned_rows 2000 | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-max-insert-rows | settings | setting-max-insert-rows | max_insert_rows | Maximum rows that can be inserted at a time using the bulk insert API, see Inserting rows . Defaults to 100. You can increase or decrease this limit like so: datasette mydatabase.db --setting max_insert_rows 1000 | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-allow-facet | settings | setting-allow-facet | allow_facet | Allow users to specify columns they would like to facet on using the ?_facet=COLNAME URL parameter to the table view. This is enabled by default. If disabled, facets will still be displayed if they have been specifically enabled in metadata.json configuration for the table. Here's how to disable this feature: datasette mydatabase.db --setting allow_facet off | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-default-facet-size | settings | setting-default-facet-size | default_facet_size | The default number of unique rows returned by Facets is 30. You can customize it like this: datasette mydatabase.db --setting default_facet_size 50 | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-facet-time-limit-ms | settings | setting-facet-time-limit-ms | facet_time_limit_ms | This is the time limit Datasette allows for calculating a facet, which defaults to 200ms: datasette mydatabase.db --setting facet_time_limit_ms 1000 | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-facet-suggest-time-limit-ms | settings | setting-facet-suggest-time-limit-ms | facet_suggest_time_limit_ms | When Datasette calculates suggested facets it needs to run a SQL query for every column in your table. The default for this time limit is 50ms to account for the fact that it needs to run once for every column. If the time limit is exceeded the column will not be suggested as a facet. You can increase this time limit like so: datasette mydatabase.db --setting facet_suggest_time_limit_ms 500 | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-suggest-facets | settings | setting-suggest-facets | suggest_facets | Should Datasette calculate suggested facets? On by default, turn this off like so: datasette mydatabase.db --setting suggest_facets off | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-allow-download | settings | setting-allow-download | allow_download | Should users be able to download the original SQLite database using a link on the database index page? This is turned on by default. However, databases can only be downloaded if they are served in immutable mode and not in-memory. If downloading is unavailable for either of these reasons, the download link is hidden even if allow_download is on. To disable database downloads, use the following: datasette mydatabase.db --setting allow_download off | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-allow-signed-tokens | settings | setting-allow-signed-tokens | allow_signed_tokens | Should users be able to create signed API tokens to access Datasette? This is turned on by default. Use the following to turn it off: datasette mydatabase.db --setting allow_signed_tokens off Turning this setting off will disable the /-/create-token page, described here . It will also cause any incoming Authorization: Bearer dstok_... API tokens to be ignored. | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-max-signed-tokens-ttl | settings | setting-max-signed-tokens-ttl | max_signed_tokens_ttl | Maximum allowed expiry time for signed API tokens created by users. Defaults to 0 which means no limit - tokens can be created that will never expire. Set this to a value in seconds to limit the maximum expiry time. For example, to set that limit to 24 hours you would use: datasette mydatabase.db --setting max_signed_tokens_ttl 86400 This setting is enforced when incoming tokens are processed. | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-default-cache-ttl | settings | setting-default-cache-ttl | default_cache_ttl | Default HTTP caching max-age header in seconds, used for Cache-Control: max-age=X . Can be over-ridden on a per-request basis using the ?_ttl= query string parameter. Set this to 0 to disable HTTP caching entirely. Defaults to 5 seconds. datasette mydatabase.db --setting default_cache_ttl 60 | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-allow-csv-stream | settings | setting-allow-csv-stream | allow_csv_stream | Enables the CSV export feature where an entire table (potentially hundreds of thousands of rows) can be exported as a single CSV file. This is turned on by default - you can turn it off like this: datasette mydatabase.db --setting allow_csv_stream off | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-max-csv-mb | settings | setting-max-csv-mb | max_csv_mb | The maximum size of CSV that can be exported, in megabytes. Defaults to 100MB. You can disable the limit entirely by settings this to 0: datasette mydatabase.db --setting max_csv_mb 0 | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-truncate-cells-html | settings | setting-truncate-cells-html | truncate_cells_html | In the HTML table view, truncate any strings that are longer than this value. The full value will still be available in CSV, JSON and on the individual row HTML page. Set this to 0 to disable truncation. datasette mydatabase.db --setting truncate_cells_html 0 | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-force-https-urls | settings | setting-force-https-urls | force_https_urls | Forces self-referential URLs in the JSON output to always use the https:// protocol. This is useful for cases where the application itself is hosted using HTTP but is served to the outside world via a proxy that enables HTTPS. datasette mydatabase.db --setting force_https_urls 1 | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-base-url | settings | setting-base-url | base_url | If you are running Datasette behind a proxy, it may be useful to change the root path used for the Datasette instance. For example, if you are sending traffic from https://www.example.com/tools/datasette/ through to a proxied Datasette instance you may wish Datasette to use /tools/datasette/ as its root URL. You can do that like so: datasette mydatabase.db --setting base_url /tools/datasette/ | ["Settings", "Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-secret | settings | setting-secret | Configuring the secret | Datasette uses a secret string to sign secure values such as cookies. If you do not provide a secret, Datasette will create one when it starts up. This secret will reset every time the Datasette server restarts though, so things like authentication cookies and API tokens will not stay valid between restarts. You can pass a secret to Datasette in two ways: with the --secret command-line option or by setting a DATASETTE_SECRET environment variable. datasette mydb.db --secret=SECRET_VALUE_HERE Or: export DATASETTE_SECRET=SECRET_VALUE_HERE datasette mydb.db One way to generate a secure random secret is to use Python like this: python3 -c 'import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex(32))' cdb19e94283a20f9d42cca50c5a4871c0aa07392db308755d60a1a5b9bb0fa52 Plugin authors make use of this signing mechanism in their plugins using .sign(value, namespace="default") and .unsign(value, namespace="default") . | ["Settings"] | [] |
settings:setting-publish-secrets | settings | setting-publish-secrets | Using secrets with datasette publish | The datasette publish and datasette package commands both generate a secret for you automatically when Datasette is deployed. This means that every time you deploy a new version of a Datasette project, a new secret will be generated. This will cause signed cookies to become invalid on every fresh deploy. You can fix this by creating a secret that will be used for multiple deploys and passing it using the --secret option: datasette publish cloudrun mydb.db --service=my-service --secret=cdb19e94283a20f9d42cca5 | ["Settings"] | [] |
deploying:deploying | deploying | deploying | Deploying Datasette | The quickest way to deploy a Datasette instance on the internet is to use the datasette publish command, described in Publishing data . This can be used to quickly deploy Datasette to a number of hosting providers including Heroku, Google Cloud Run and Vercel. You can deploy Datasette to other hosting providers using the instructions on this page. | [] | [] |
deploying:deploying-fundamentals | deploying | deploying-fundamentals | Deployment fundamentals | Datasette can be deployed as a single datasette process that listens on a port. Datasette is not designed to be run as root, so that process should listen on a higher port such as port 8000. If you want to serve Datasette on port 80 (the HTTP default port) or port 443 (for HTTPS) you should run it behind a proxy server, such as nginx, Apache or HAProxy. The proxy server can listen on port 80/443 and forward traffic on to Datasette. | ["Deploying Datasette"] | [] |
deploying:deploying-systemd | deploying | deploying-systemd | Running Datasette using systemd | You can run Datasette on Ubuntu or Debian systems using systemd . First, ensure you have Python 3 and pip installed. On Ubuntu you can use sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip . You can install Datasette into a virtual environment, or you can install it system-wide. To install system-wide, use sudo pip3 install datasette . Now create a folder for your Datasette databases, for example using mkdir /home/ubuntu/datasette-root . You can copy a test database into that folder like so: cd /home/ubuntu/datasette-root curl -O https://latest.datasette.io/fixtures.db Create a file at /etc/systemd/system/datasette.service with the following contents: [Unit] Description=Datasette After=network.target [Service] Type=simple User=ubuntu Environment=DATASETTE_SECRET= WorkingDirectory=/home/ubuntu/datasette-root ExecStart=datasette serve . -h 127.0.0.1 -p 8000 Restart=on-failure [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target Add a random value for the DATASETTE_SECRET - this will be used to sign Datasette cookies such as the CSRF token cookie. You can generate a suitable value like so: python3 -c 'import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex(32))' This configuration will run Datasette against all database files contained in the /home/ubuntu/datasette-root directory. If that directory contains a metadata.yml (or .json ) file or a templates/ or plugins/ sub-directory those will automatically be loaded by Datasette - see Configuration directory mode for details. You can start the Datasette process running using the following: sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl start datasette.service You will need to restart the Datasette service after making changes to its metadata.json configuration or adding a new database file to that directory. You can do that using: sudo systemctl restart datasette.service Once the … | ["Deploying Datasette"] | [] |
deploying:deploying-proxy | deploying | deploying-proxy | Running Datasette behind a proxy | You may wish to run Datasette behind an Apache or nginx proxy, using a path within your existing site. You can use the base_url configuration setting to tell Datasette to serve traffic with a specific URL prefix. For example, you could run Datasette like this: datasette my-database.db --setting base_url /my-datasette/ -p 8009 This will run Datasette with the following URLs: http://127.0.0.1:8009/my-datasette/ - the Datasette homepage http://127.0.0.1:8009/my-datasette/my-database - the page for the my-database.db database http://127.0.0.1:8009/my-datasette/my-database/some_table - the page for the some_table table You can now set your nginx or Apache server to proxy the /my-datasette/ path to this Datasette instance. | ["Deploying Datasette"] | [] |
facets:facets-in-query-strings | facets | facets-in-query-strings | Facets in query strings | To turn on faceting for specific columns on a Datasette table view, add one or more _facet=COLUMN parameters to the URL. For example, if you want to turn on facets for the city_id and state columns, construct a URL that looks like this: /dbname/tablename?_facet=state&_facet=city_id This works for both the HTML interface and the .json view. When enabled, facets will cause a facet_results block to be added to the JSON output, looking something like this: { "state": { "name": "state", "results": [ { "value": "CA", "label": "CA", "count": 10, "toggle_url": "http://...?_facet=city_id&_facet=state&state=CA", "selected": false }, { "value": "MI", "label": "MI", "count": 4, "toggle_url": "http://...?_facet=city_id&_facet=state&state=MI", "selected": false }, { "value": "MC", "label": "MC", "count": 1, "toggle_url": "http://...?_facet=city_id&_facet=state&state=MC", "selected": false } ], "truncated": false } "city_id": { "name": "city_id", "results": [ { "value": 1, "label": "San Francisco", "count": 6, "toggle_url": "http://...?_facet=city_id&_facet=state&city_id=1", "selected": false }, { "value": 2, "label": "Los Angeles", "count": 4, "toggle_url": "http://...?_facet=city_id&_facet=state&city_id=2", "selected": false }, { "value": 3, "label": "Detroit", "count": 4, "toggle_url": "http://...?_facet=city_id&_facet=state&city_id=3", "selected": false }, { "value": 4, "label": "Memnonia", "count": 1, "toggle_url": "http://...?_facet=city_id&_facet=state&city_id=4", "selected": false } ], "truncated": false } } If Datasette detect… | ["Facets"] | [] |
facets:facets-metadata | facets | facets-metadata | Facets in metadata | You can turn facets on by default for specific tables by adding them to a "facets" key in a Datasette Metadata file. Here's an example that turns on faceting by default for the qLegalStatus column in the Street_Tree_List table in the sf-trees database: [[[cog from metadata_doc import metadata_example metadata_example(cog, { "databases": { "sf-trees": { "tables": { "Street_Tree_List": { "facets": ["qLegalStatus"] } } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] Facets defined in this way will always be shown in the interface and returned in the API, regardless of the _facet arguments passed to the view. You can specify array or date facets in metadata using JSON objects with a single key of array or date and a value specifying the column, like this: [[[cog metadata_example(cog, { "facets": [ {"array": "tags"}, {"date": "created"} ] }) ]]] [[[end]]] You can change the default facet size (the number of results shown for each facet) for a table using facet_size : [[[cog metadata_example(cog, { "databases": { "sf-trees": { "tables": { "Street_Tree_List": { "facets": ["qLegalStatus"], "facet_size": 10 } } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] | ["Facets"] | [] |
facets:suggested-facets | facets | suggested-facets | Suggested facets | Datasette's table UI will suggest facets for the user to apply, based on the following criteria: For the currently filtered data are there any columns which, if applied as a facet... Will return 30 or less unique options Will return more than one unique option Will return less unique options than the total number of filtered rows And the query used to evaluate this criteria can be completed in under 50ms That last point is particularly important: Datasette runs a query for every column that is displayed on a page, which could get expensive - so to avoid slow load times it sets a time limit of just 50ms for each of those queries. This means suggested facets are unlikely to appear for tables with millions of records in them. | ["Facets"] | [] |
sql_queries:sql | sql_queries | sql | Running SQL queries | Datasette treats SQLite database files as read-only and immutable. This means it is not possible to execute INSERT or UPDATE statements using Datasette, which allows us to expose SELECT statements to the outside world without needing to worry about SQL injection attacks. The easiest way to execute custom SQL against Datasette is through the web UI. The database index page includes a SQL editor that lets you run any SELECT query you like. You can also construct queries using the filter interface on the tables page, then click "View and edit SQL" to open that query in the custom SQL editor. Note that this interface is only available if the execute-sql permission is allowed. See Controlling the ability to execute arbitrary SQL . Any Datasette SQL query is reflected in the URL of the page, allowing you to bookmark them, share them with others and navigate through previous queries using your browser back button. You can also retrieve the results of any query as JSON by adding .json to the base URL. | [] | [] |
sql_queries:id1 | sql_queries | id1 | Canned queries | As an alternative to adding views to your database, you can define canned queries inside your datasette.yaml file. Here's an example: [[[cog from metadata_doc import config_example, config_example config_example(cog, { "databases": { "sf-trees": { "queries": { "just_species": { "sql": "select qSpecies from Street_Tree_List" } } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] Then run Datasette like this: datasette sf-trees.db -m metadata.json Each canned query will be listed on the database index page, and will also get its own URL at: /database-name/canned-query-name For the above example, that URL would be: /sf-trees/just_species You can optionally include "title" and "description" keys to show a title and description on the canned query page. As with regular table metadata you can alternatively specify "description_html" to have your description rendered as HTML (rather than having HTML special characters escaped). | ["Running SQL queries"] | [] |
sql_queries:canned-queries-options | sql_queries | canned-queries-options | Additional canned query options | Additional options can be specified for canned queries in the YAML or JSON configuration. | ["Running SQL queries", "Canned queries"] | [] |
sql_queries:hide-sql | sql_queries | hide-sql | hide_sql | Canned queries default to displaying their SQL query at the top of the page. If the query is extremely long you may want to hide it by default, with a "show" link that can be used to make it visible. Add the "hide_sql": true option to hide the SQL query by default. | ["Running SQL queries", "Canned queries", "Additional canned query options"] | [] |
sql_queries:canned-queries-writable | sql_queries | canned-queries-writable | Writable canned queries | Canned queries by default are read-only. You can use the "write": true key to indicate that a canned query can write to the database. See Access to specific canned queries for details on how to add permission checks to canned queries, using the "allow" key. [[[cog config_example(cog, { "databases": { "mydatabase": { "queries": { "add_name": { "sql": "INSERT INTO names (name) VALUES (:name)", "write": True } } } } }) ]]] [[[end]]] This configuration will create a page at /mydatabase/add_name displaying a form with a name field. Submitting that form will execute the configured INSERT query. You can customize how Datasette represents success and errors using the following optional properties: on_success_message - the message shown when a query is successful on_success_message_sql - alternative to on_success_message : a SQL query that should be executed to generate the message on_success_redirect - the path or URL the user is redirected to on success on_error_message - the message shown when a query throws an error on_error_redirect - the path or URL the user is redirected to on error For example: [[[cog config_example(cog, { "databases": { "mydatabase": { "queries": { "add_name": { "sql": "INSERT INTO names (name) VALUES (:name)", "params": ["name"], "write": Tru… | ["Running SQL queries", "Canned queries"] | [] |
sql_queries:canned-queries-magic-parameters | sql_queries | canned-queries-magic-parameters | Magic parameters | Named parameters that start with an underscore are special: they can be used to automatically add values created by Datasette that are not contained in the incoming form fields or query string. These magic parameters are only supported for canned queries: to avoid security issues (such as queries that extract the user's private cookies) they are not available to SQL that is executed by the user as a custom SQL query. Available magic parameters are: _actor_* - e.g. _actor_id , _actor_name Fields from the currently authenticated Actors . _header_* - e.g. _header_user_agent Header from the incoming HTTP request. The key should be in lower case and with hyphens converted to underscores e.g. _header_user_agent or _header_accept_language . _cookie_* - e.g. _cookie_lang The value of the incoming cookie of that name. _now_epoch The number of seconds since the Unix epoch. _now_date_utc The date in UTC, e.g. 2020-06-01 _now_datetime_utc The ISO 8601 datetime in UTC, e.g. 2020-06-24T18:01:07Z _random_chars_* - e.g. … | ["Running SQL queries", "Canned queries"] | [] |
sql_queries:canned-queries-json-api | sql_queries | canned-queries-json-api | JSON API for writable canned queries | Writable canned queries can also be accessed using a JSON API. You can POST data to them using JSON, and you can request that their response is returned to you as JSON. To submit JSON to a writable canned query, encode key/value parameters as a JSON document: POST /mydatabase/add_message {"message": "Message goes here"} You can also continue to submit data using regular form encoding, like so: POST /mydatabase/add_message message=Message+goes+here There are three options for specifying that you would like the response to your request to return JSON data, as opposed to an HTTP redirect to another page. Set an Accept: application/json header on your request Include ?_json=1 in the URL that you POST to Include "_json": 1 in your JSON body, or &_json=1 in your form encoded body The JSON response will look like this: { "ok": true, "message": "Query executed, 1 row affected", "redirect": "/data/add_name" } The "message" and "redirect" values here will take into account on_success_message , on_success_message_sql , on_success_redirect , on_error_message and on_error_redirect , if they have been set. | ["Running SQL queries", "Canned queries"] | [] |
sql_queries:id2 | sql_queries | id2 | Pagination | Datasette's default table pagination is designed to be extremely efficient. SQL OFFSET/LIMIT pagination can have a significant performance penalty once you get into multiple thousands of rows, as each page still requires the database to scan through every preceding row to find the correct offset. When paginating through tables, Datasette instead orders the rows in the table by their primary key and performs a WHERE clause against the last seen primary key for the previous page. For example: select rowid, * from Tree_List where rowid > 200 order by rowid limit 101 This represents page three for this particular table, with a page size of 100. Note that we request 101 items in the limit clause rather than 100. This allows us to detect if we are on the last page of the results: if the query returns less than 101 rows we know we have reached the end of the pagination set. Datasette will only return the first 100 rows - the 101st is used purely to detect if there should be another page. Since the where clause acts against the index on the primary key, the query is extremely fast even for records that are a long way into the overall pagination set. | ["Running SQL queries"] | [] |
contributing:id1 | contributing | id1 | Contributing | Datasette is an open source project. We welcome contributions! This document describes how to contribute to Datasette core. You can also contribute to the wider Datasette ecosystem by creating new Plugins . | [] | [] |
contributing:general-guidelines | contributing | general-guidelines | General guidelines | main should always be releasable . Incomplete features should live in branches. This ensures that any small bug fixes can be quickly released. The ideal commit should bundle together the implementation, unit tests and associated documentation updates. The commit message should link to an associated issue. New plugin hooks should only be shipped if accompanied by a separate release of a non-demo plugin that uses them. | ["Contributing"] | [] |
contributing:contributing-using-fixtures | contributing | contributing-using-fixtures | Using fixtures | To run Datasette itself, type datasette . You're going to need at least one SQLite database. A quick way to get started is to use the fixtures database that Datasette uses for its own tests. You can create a copy of that database by running this command: python tests/fixtures.py fixtures.db Now you can run Datasette against the new fixtures database like so: datasette fixtures.db This will start a server at http://127.0.0.1:8001/ . Any changes you make in the datasette/templates or datasette/static folder will be picked up immediately (though you may need to do a force-refresh in your browser to see changes to CSS or JavaScript). If you want to change Datasette's Python code you can use the --reload option to cause Datasette to automatically reload any time the underlying code changes: datasette --reload fixtures.db You can also use the fixtures.py script to recreate the testing version of metadata.json used by the unit tests. To do that: python tests/fixtures.py fixtures.db fixtures-metadata.json Or to output the plugins used by the tests, run this: python tests/fixtures.py fixtures.db fixtures-metadata.json fixtures-plugins Test tables written to fixtures.db - metadata written to fixtures-metadata.json Wrote plugin: fixtures-plugins/register_output_renderer.py Wrote plugin: fixtures-plugins/view_name.py Wrote plugin: fixtures-plugins/my_plugin.py Wrote plugin: fixtures-plugins/messages_output_renderer.py Wrote plugin: fixtures-plugins/my_plugin_2.py Then run Datasette like this: datasette fixtures.db -m fixtures-metadata.json --plugins-dir=fixtures-plugins/ | ["Contributing"] | [] |
contributing:contributing-debugging | contributing | contributing-debugging | Debugging | Any errors that occur while Datasette is running while display a stack trace on the console. You can tell Datasette to open an interactive pdb debugger session if an error occurs using the --pdb option: datasette --pdb fixtures.db | ["Contributing"] | [] |
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