PRQL extension for Visual Studio Code

PRQL is a modern language for transforming data — a simple, powerful, pipelined SQL replacement.

This extension adds PRQL support to VS Code.

Features

• PRQL language support and syntax highlighting
• SQL Previews with Problems diagnostics and PRQL errors display updated on every keystroke as you type PRQL
• Dedicated SQL Previews linked to open PRQL documents in VS Code editor
• Restore open SQL Previews on VS Code reload
• Copy SQL from an open SQL Preview to VS Code Clipboard
• Generate SQL File PRQL editor context menu shortcut
• View PRQL Settings editor context menu shortcut
• PRQL compile target setting for the generated SQL dialect
• Multi-target SQL generation and file naming options
• Optional PRQL compiler signature comment append in generated SQL

Feature Contributions

PRQL extension contributes the following Settings, Commands, Languages and Activation Events to the VS Code:

Configuration

Modify User or Workspace Settings in VS Code to change the default PRQL extension Settings globally or only for the open project workspace.

You can use new View PRQL Settings PRQL editor context menu shortcut to access and modify PRQL extension Settings:

PRQL Settings

PRQL extension Settings allow you to customize PRQL compiler options and filenames of the generated SQL files. Use the ⚙️ PRQL Settings shortcut from the open PRQL document editor context menu to access and change these configuration options.

Setting	Description
prql.target	Specifies the default PRQL compiler target dialect to use when generating SQL from pipeline definition files (.prql) globally or in an open vscode project workspace. Defaults to Generic.
prql.addCompilerSignatureComment	Adds Generated by PRQL compiler version ... signature comment with SQL target dialect info used to create SQL from PRQL document. Defaults to true. Set this setting to false to stop PRQL compiler from adding Generated by ... line to the end of the created SQL.
prql.addTargetDialectToSqlFilenames	Adds target dialect suffix to the generated SQL filenames when Generate Sql File PRQL document command is used. Defaults to false. Set this setting to true when targeting multiple database systems with different SQL flavors. For example, projects using PostgreSQL transaction database and DuckDB OLAP database management system for analytics can use this option to generate different SQL from PRQL query documents. PRQL extension will save generated SQL documents as *.postgre.sql and *.duckdb.sql when using Generate SQL File command with the currently selected prql.target in PRQL Settings set to Postgre or DuckDB.

PRQL Target

PRQL extension and the underlying prql-js compiler used by this extension supports the following PRQL target dialect options: Ansi, BigQuery, ClickHouse, DuckDb, Generic, MsSql, MySql, Postgres, SQLite, Snowflake, and Any.

The prql.target extension setting default option value is Generic, which will produce SQL that should work with most database management systems. We recommend you set it to the target DB you are working with in your project workspace settings.

You can also disable this PRQL compiler option in vscode extension by setting prql.target to Any. When prql.target is set to Any, PRQL compiler will read the target SQL dialect from .prql file header as described in PRQL Language Book. For example, setting prql.target to Any and adding prql target:sql.postgres on the first line of your .prql query file will produce SQL for PostgreSQL database. Otherwise, Generic SQL flavor will be used for the generated SQL.

Deploying the Extension

This repo has the machinery to update the VSCode extension to the Microsoft Marketplace.

When there is a new version of prqlc in npm, dependabot will PR an update. Once per day, the .github/dependabot.yml file checks NPM and compares the dependencies.prqlc property in package.json to the latest version in NPM. If they differ, dependabot creates a PR for package.json.

Once that has been merged, the following manual steps will publish an update for the extension:

• Update the CHANGELOG.md file, as needed

• In package.json, update the version to match. This sets the version number of the extension itself.

• Run npm install to update the package-lock.json

• Create a new release from Github. This will start a workflow to release the current version to the VS Code Marketplace.

• NB: From time to time, check the node-version in the files*.github/workflows/pull-request.yaml* and .github/workflows/release.yml. We track Node.js LTS - version 20 in June 2024.

Developing the Extension

• Clone the repository and install dependencies:

  git clone git@github.com:prql/prql-vscode.git
  cd prql-vscode && npm install

• Open the project in VS Code and start the TypeScript compilation task via Command Palette -> Tasks: Run build task -> npm: watch. Alternatively, you can run the compilation in your terminal directly:

  npm run watch

• Launch the extension in the Run and Debug panel. If you need to develop against a local version of prql-js, use npm link and restart the compilation task:

  npm link ../prql/prql-js