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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 the web browser, Node.js, and mobile apps.

This library is perfect for:

Fast in-memory SQL data processing for BI and ERP applications on fat clients
Easy ETL and options for persistence 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 language, spiced up with additional syntax for NoSQL (schema-less) data and graph networks.

Traditional SQL Table

/* create SQL Table and add data */
alasql('CREATE TABLE cities (city string, pop number)');

alasql("INSERT INTO cities VALUES ('Paris',2249975),('Berlin',3517424),('Madrid',3041579)");

/* execute query */
var res = alasql('SELECT * FROM cities WHERE pop < 3500000 ORDER BY pop DESC');

// res = [ { "city": "Madrid", "pop": 3041579 }, { "city": "Paris", "pop": 2249975 } ]

Live Demo

Array of Objects

var data = [
	{a: 1, b: 10},
	{a: 2, b: 20},
	{a: 1, b: 30},
];

var res = alasql('SELECT a, SUM(b) AS b FROM ? GROUP BY a', [data]);

// res = [ { "a": 1, "b": 40},{ "a": 2, "b": 20 } ]

Live Demo

Spreadsheet

// file is read asynchronously (Promise returned when SQL given as array)
alasql([
	'SELECT * FROM XLS("./data/mydata") WHERE lastname LIKE "A%" and city = "London" GROUP BY name ',
])
	.then(function (res) {
		console.log(res); // output depends on mydata.xls
	})
	.catch(function (err) {
		console.log('Does the file exist? There was an error:', err);
	});

Bulk Data Load

alasql('CREATE TABLE example1 (a INT, b INT)');

// alasql's data store for a table can be assigned directly
alasql.tables.example1.data = [
	{a: 2, b: 6},
	{a: 3, b: 4},
];

// ... or manipulated with normal SQL
alasql('INSERT INTO example1 VALUES (1,5)');

var res = alasql('SELECT * FROM example1 ORDER BY b DESC');

console.log(res); // [{a:2,b:6},{a:1,b:5},{a:3,b:4}]

If you are familiar with SQL, it should be no surprise that proper use of indexes on your tables is essential for good performance.

Options

AlaSQL has several configuration options which change the behavior. It can be set via SQL statements or via the options object before using alasql.

If you're using NOW() in queries often, setting alasql.options.dateAsString to false speed things up. It will just return a JS Date object instead of a string representation of a date.

Installation

yarn add alasql                # yarn

npm install alasql             # npm

npm install -g alasql          # global install of command line tool

For the browsers: include alasql.min.js

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/alasql@4"></script>

Getting started

See the "Getting started" section of the wiki

More advanced topics are covered in other wiki sections like "Data manipulation" and in questions on Stack Overflow

Other links:

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

The AlaSQL project depends on your contribution of code and ~~may~~ have bugs. So please, submit any bugs and suggestions as an issue.

Please check out the limitations of the library.

Performance

AlaSQL is designed for speed and includes some of the classic SQL engine optimizations:

Queries are cached as compiled functions
Joined tables are pre-indexed
WHERE expressions are pre-filtered for joins

See more performance-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. The wiki lists supported SQL statements and keywords.

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:

alasql.fn.myfn = function (a, b) {
	return a * b + 1;
};
var res = alasql('SELECT myfn(a,b) FROM one');

You can also define your own aggregator functions (like your own SUM(...)). See more in the wiki

Compiled statements and functions

var ins = alasql.compile('INSERT INTO one VALUES (?,?)');
ins(1, 10);
ins(2, 20);

See more in the wiki

SELECT against your JavaScript data

Group your JavaScript array of objects by field and count number of records in each group:

var data = [
	{a: 1, b: 1, c: 1},
	{a: 1, b: 2, c: 1},
	{a: 1, b: 3, c: 1},
	{a: 2, b: 1, c: 1},
];
var res = alasql('SELECT a, COUNT(*) AS b FROM ? GROUP BY a', [data]);

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']}
Access object properties - obj->property->subproperty
Access object and arrays elements - obj->(a*1)
Access JavaScript functions - obj->valueOf()
Format query output with SELECT VALUE, ROW, COLUMN, MATRIX
Output nested objects with INTO OBJECT() - converts arrow notation columns back to nested structure
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)

Extracting Nested Properties with INTO OBJECT()

When selecting nested properties using arrow notation (->), results are normally flattened with the arrow path as the key. Use INTO OBJECT() to restore the nested structure:

var data = [{name: 'Oslo', info: {country: 'Norway', population: 700000}}];

// Standard output (flattened)
alasql('SELECT name, info->country FROM ?', [data]);
// [{ "name": "Oslo", "info->country": "Norway" }]

// With INTO OBJECT() (nested)
alasql('SELECT name, info->country INTO OBJECT() FROM ?', [data]);
// [{ "name": "Oslo", "info": { "country": "Norway" } }]

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 asynchronous so multi-file queries should be chained:

var tabFile = 'mydata.tab';

alasql
	.promise([
		"SELECT * FROM txt('MyFile.log') WHERE [0] LIKE 'M%'", // parameter-less query
		['SELECT * FROM tab(?) ORDER BY [1]', [tabFile]], // [query, array of params]
		"SELECT [3] AS city,[4] AS population FROM csv('./data/cities')",
		"SELECT * FROM json('../config/myJsonfile')",
	])
	.then(function (results) {
		console.log(results);
	})
	.catch(console.error);

Read SQLite database files

AlaSQL can read (but not write) SQLite data files using SQL.js library:

<script src="alasql.js"></script>
<script src="sql.js"></script>
<script>
	alasql([
		'ATTACH SQLITE DATABASE Chinook("Chinook_Sqlite.sqlite")',
		'USE Chinook',
		'SELECT * FROM Genre',
	]).then(function (res) {
		console.log('Genres:', res.pop());
	});
</script>

sql.js calls will always be asynchronous.

AlaSQL works in the console - CLI

The node module ships with an alasql command-line tool:

$ npm install -g alasql ## install the module globally

$ alasql -h ## shows usage information

$ alasql "SET @data = @[{a:'1',b:?},{a:'2',b:?}]; SELECT a, b FROM @data;" 10 20
[ 1, [ { a: 1, b: 10 }, { a: 2, b: 20 } ] ]

$ alasql "VALUE OF SELECT COUNT(*) AS abc FROM TXT('README.md') WHERE LENGTH([0]) > ?" 140
// Number of lines with more than 140 characters in README.md

More examples are included 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 powerful 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 write SELECT `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 to JOIN 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 so SELECTing 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 KEYs / FOREIGN KEYs. Transactions will be fully turned on again in a future version.
A (FULL) OUTER JOIN and RIGHT JOIN of more than 2 tables will not produce expected results. INNER JOIN and LEFT JOIN are OK.
Please use aliases when you want fields with the 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.
JOINing a sub-SELECT does not work. Please use a with structure (Example here) or fetch the sub-SELECT to a variable and pass it as an argument (Example here).
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:

alasql([
	'CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS geo.country',
	'SELECT * INTO geo.country FROM CSV("country.csv",{headers:true})',
	'SELECT * INTO XLSX("asia") FROM geo.country WHERE continent_name = "Asia"',
]).then(function (res) {
	// results from the file asia.xlsx
});

Use AlaSQL as a Web Worker

AlaSQL can run in a Web Worker. Please be aware that all interaction with AlaSQL when running must be async.

From the browser thread, the browser build alasql-worker.min.js automagically uses Web Workers:

<script src="alasql-worker.min.js"></script>
<script>
	var arr = [{a: 1}, {a: 2}, {a: 1}];

	alasql([['SELECT * FROM ?', [arr]]]).then(function (data) {
		console.log(data);
	});
</script>

Live Demo.

The standard build alasql.min.js will use Web Workers if alasql.worker() is called:

<script src="alasql.min.js"></script>
<script>
	alasql.worker();
	alasql(['SELECT VALUE 10'])
		.then(function (res) {
			console.log(res);
		})
		.catch(console.error);
</script>

Live Demo.

From a Web Worker, you can import alasql.min.js with importScripts:

importScripts('alasql.min.js');

Webpack, Browserify, Vue and React (Native)

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 may require in certain environments or for certain features:

Node.js
- fs
- net
- tls
- request
- path
React Native
- react-native
- react-native-fs
- react-native-fetch-blob
Vertx
- vertx
Agonostic
- XLSX/XLS support
  - cptable
  - jszip
  - xlsx
  - cpexcel
- es6-promise

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 =  require("webpack").IgnorePlugin;

module.exports = {
  ...
  // Will ignore the modules fs, path, xlsx, request, vertx, and react-native modules
  plugins:[new IgnorePlugin(/(^fs$|cptable|jszip|xlsx|^es6-promise$|^net$|^tls$|^forever-agent$|^tough-cookie$|cpexcel|^path$|^request$|react-native|^vertx$)/)]
};

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 alasql
{module: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
import 'script!alasql';

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 = require("browserify");
var b = browserify("./main.js").bundle();
//Will ignore the modules fs, path, xlsx
["fs","path","xlsx",  ... ].forEach(ignore => { b.ignore(ignore) });

Vue

For some frameworks (like Vue) alasql can't access XLSX by it self. We recommend handling it by including AlaSQL the following way:

import XLSX from 'xlsx';
alasql.utils.isBrowserify = false;
alasql.utils.global.XLSX = 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 comparison 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](http://alasql.org/console?drop table if exists one;create table one;insert into one values {a:@[1,2,3],c:{e:23}}, {a:@[{b:@[1,2,3]}]};select * from one)

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 = alasql('SEARCH / ANY(>> >> #Alice) name');
console.log(res); // ['Olga','Helen']

See more in the wiki

localStorage and DOM-storage

You can use browser localStorage and DOM-storage as a data storage. Here is a sample:

alasql('CREATE localStorage DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS Atlas');
alasql('ATTACH localStorage DATABASE Atlas AS MyAtlas');
alasql('CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS MyAtlas.City (city string, population number)');
alasql('SELECT * INTO MyAtlas.City FROM ?', [
	[
		{city: 'Vienna', population: 1731000},
		{city: 'Budapest', population: 1728000},
	],
]);
var res = alasql('SELECT * FROM MyAtlas.City');

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.

Plugins

AlaSQL supports plugins. To install a plugin you need to use the REQUIRE statement. See more in 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

then open http://127.0.0.1:1337/?SELECT%20VALUE%20(2*2) in your browser

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 open 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:

CREATE TABLE one (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.

Rebuilding the parser

To rebuild the parser, follow these steps:

Make changes to alasqlparser.jison
npm install -g jison
npm run jison
npm test to validate the changes made
Commit changes to alasqlparser.jison and alasqlparser.js

Contributing

See Contributing for details.

Thanks to all the people who already contributed!

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

Sponsors

We extend our heartfelt thanks to each and every sponsor for generously supporting the AlaSQL open-source project by providing infrastructure at no cost. Their contributions enhance the development experience, and we highly recommend exploring their offerings.

Faster GitHub Actions with Blacksmith

Blacksmith significantly improves the speed of our GitHub Actions workflows by offering more powerful machines and enhanced caching mechanisms. Transitining was a one-line change and it has reduced our automated test times from 70-90 seconds to 15-17 seconds.

Browser Testing on Physical Devices with BrowserStack

BrowserStack enables us to run automated tests in real browsers on physical devices to help us identify cross-browser issues early.

Development Practice Tracking with OpenSSF

The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) provides automated tools to evaluate and monitor the development practices in our repository, ensuring we maintain high standards of security and reliability.

License

MIT - see MIT licence information

Credits

Many thanks to:

Zach Carter for Jison parser-generator
Andrew Kent for JS SQL Parser
Eli Grey for FileSaver.js
SheetJS for JS 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
AlaMDX - JavaScript MDX OLAP library (work in progress)
Other similar projects - list of databases on JavaScript

© 2014-2025, Andrey Gershun (agershun@gmail.com) & Mathias Rangel Wulff (m@rawu.dk)

See this article for a bit of information about the motivation and background.