Getting Started¶

To get started with sqlfluff you’ll need python and pip installed on your machine, if you’re already set up, you can skip straight to Installing sqlfluff.

Installing Python¶

How to install python and pip depends on what operating system you’re using. In any case, the python wiki provides up to date instructions for all platforms here.

There’s a chance that you’ll be offered the choice between python versions. Support for python 2 was dropped in early 2020, so you should always opt for a version number starting with a 3. As for more specific options beyond that, sqlfluff aims to be compatible with all current python versions, and so it’s best to pick the most recent.

You can confirm that python is working as expected by heading to your terminal or console of choice and typing python --version which should give you a sensible read out and not an error.

$ python --version
Python 3.6.7

For most people, their installation of python will come with pip (the python pacakge manager) preinstalled. To confirm this you can type pip --version similar to python above.

$ pip --version
pip 10.0.1 from ...

If however, you do have python installed but not pip, then the best instructions for what to do next are on the python website.

Installing sqlfluff¶

Assuming that python and pip are already installed, then installing sqlfluff is straight forward.

$ pip install sqlfluff

You can confirm it’s installation by getting sqlfluff to show it’s version number.

$ sqlfluff version
0.3.1

Basic Usage¶

To get a feel for how to use sqlfluff it helps to have a small .sql file which has a simple structure and some known issues for testing. Create a file called test.sql in the same folder that you’re currently in with the following content:

SELECT a+b  AS foo,
c AS bar from my_table

You can then run sqlfluff lint test.sql to lint this file.

$ sqlfluff lint test.sql
== [test.sql] FAIL
L:   1 | P:   9 | L006 | Operators should be preceded by a space.
L:   1 | P:  10 | L006 | Operators should be followed by a space.
L:   2 | P:   1 | L003 | Indent expected and not found compared to line #1
L:   2 | P:  10 | L010 | Inconsistent capitalisation of keywords.
L:   2 | P:  15 | L009 | Files must end with a trailing newline.

You’ll see that sqlfluff has failed the linting check for this file. On each of the following lines you can see each of the problems it has found, with some information about the location and what kind of problem there is. The first one has been found on line 1, position 9 (as shown by L:   1 | P:   9) and it’s a problem with rule L006 (for a full list of rules, see Rules Reference). From this (and the following error) we can see that the problem is that there is no space either side of the + symbol in a+b. Head into the file, and correct this issue so that the file now looks like this:

SELECT a + b  AS foo,
c AS bar from my_table

Rerun the same command as before, and you’ll see that the original problems now no longer show up.

$ sqlfluff lint test.sql
== [test.sql] FAIL
L:   2 | P:   1 | L003 | Indent expected and not found compared to line #1
L:   2 | P:  10 | L010 | Inconsistent capitalisation of keywords.
L:   2 | P:  15 | L009 | Files must end with a trailing newline.

To fix the remaining issues, we’re going to use one of the more advanced features of sqlfluff, which is the fix command. This allows more automated fixing of some errors, to save you time in sorting out your sql files. Not all rules can be fixed in this way and there may be some situations where a fix may not be able to be applied because of the context of the query, but in many simple cases it’s a good place to start. Another thing to note is that when fixing, you must always be specific about which rules you wish to fix. This is to minimise any unintended consequences from making large scale changes to your code. In this case we want to try and fix rules L003, L009 and L010.

$ sqlfluff fix test.sql --rules L003,L009,L010
==== finding violations ====
== [test.sql] FAIL
L:   2 | P:   1 | L003 | Indent expected and not found compared to line #1
L:   2 | P:  10 | L010 | Inconsistent capitalisation of keywords.
L:   2 | P:  15 | L009 | Files must end with a trailing newline.
==== fixing violations ====
3 linting violations found
Are you sure you wish to attempt to fix these? [Y/n]

…at this point you’ll have to confirm that you want to make the changes by pressing y on your keyboard…

Are you sure you wish to attempt to fix these? [Y/n] ...
Attempting fixes...
Persisting Changes...
== [test.sql] PASS
Done. Please check your files to confirm.

If we now open up test.sql, we’ll see the content is now different.

SELECT a + b  AS foo,
    c AS bar FROM my_table

In particular:

  • The FROM keyword has been capitalised to match the other keywords.

  • The second line has been indented to reflect being inside the SELECT statement.

  • A final newline character has been added at the end of the file (which may not be obvious in the snippet above).

Custom Usage¶

So far we’ve covered the stock settings of sqlfluff, but there are many different ways that people style their sql, and if you or your organisation have different conventions, then many of these behaviours can be configured. For example, given the example above, what if we actually think that indents should only be two spaces, and rather than upeercase keywords, they should all be lowercase?

To achieve this we create a configuration file named .sqlfluff and place it in the same directory as the current file. In that file put the following content:

[sqlfluff:rules]
tab_space_size = 2

[sqlfluff:rules:L010]
capitalisation_policy = lower

Then rerun the same command as before.

$ sqlfluff fix test.sql --rules L003,L009,L010

Then examine the file again, and you’ll notice that the file has been fixed accordingly.

select a + b  as foo,
  c as bar from my_table

For a full list of configuration options check out Default Configuration. To see how these options apply to specific rules check out the “Configuration” section within each rule’s documentation in Rules Reference.

Going further¶

From here, there are several more things to explore.

  • To understand how sqlfluff is interpreting your file explore the parse command. You can learn more about that command and more by running sqlfluff --help or sqlfluff parse --help.

  • To start linting more than just one file at a time, experiment with passing sqlfluff directories rather than just single files. Try running sqlfluff lint . (to lint every sql file in the current folder) or sqlfluff lint path/to/my/sqlfiles.

  • To find out more about which rules are available, see Rules Reference.

  • To find out more about configuring sqlfluff and what other options are available, see Configuration.

One last thing to note is that sqlfluff is a relatively new project and you may find bugs or strange things while using it. If you do find anything, the most useful thing you can do is to post the issue on github where the maintainers of the project can work out what to do with it. The project is in active development and so updates and fixes may come out regularly.