SQL
DoltHub provides an API for accessing Dolt databases via web requests. A Dolt database can be attached to a DoltHub remote and pushed. At that point DoltHub provides an API against which users can execute Dolt SQL with results returned as JSON.
Reading
Using the default branch
The SQL query to execute.
SHOW TABLES
The name of the database owner.
dolthub
The name of the database.
ip-to-country
GET /api/v1alpha1/{owner}/{database} HTTP/1.1
Host: www.dolthub.com
authorization: YOUR_API_KEY
Accept: */*
{
"query_execution_status": "Success",
"query_execution_message": "",
"repository_owner": "dolthub",
"repository_name": "ip-to-country",
"commit_ref": "main",
"sql_query:": "SHOW TABLES",
"schema": [
{
"columnName": "Tables_in_dolt",
"columnType": "longtext"
}
],
"rows": [
{
"[columnName]": "IPv4ToCountry"
}
]
}
We will use an example DoltHub database, dolthub/ip-to-country and the Python requests
library to explore it in the Python console:
import requests
owner, database = 'dolthub', 'ip-to-country'
res = requests.get('https://dolthub.com/api/v1alpha1/{}/{}'.format(owner, database))
res.json()
This shows our database metadata as a dictionary:
{'query_execution_status': 'Success',
'query_execution_message': '',
'repository_owner': 'dolthub',
'repository_name': 'ip-to-country',
'commit_ref': 'main',
'sql_query': 'SHOW TABLES;',
'schema': [{'columnName': 'Table',
'columnType': 'longtext'}],
'rows': [{'Table': 'IPv4ToCountry'}, {'Table': 'IPv6ToCountry'}]}
Specifying a ref
The SQL query to execute.
SELECT * FROM IPv4ToCountry WHERE CountryCode2Letter = 'AU'
The name of the database owner.
dolthub
The name of the database.
ip-to-country
The database ref to execute the query against.
newbranch
GET /api/v1alpha1/{owner}/{database}/{ref} HTTP/1.1
Host: www.dolthub.com
authorization: YOUR_API_KEY
Accept: */*
{
"query_execution_status": "Success",
"query_execution_message": "",
"repository_owner": "dolthub",
"repository_name": "ip-to-country",
"commit_ref": "newbranch",
"sql_query:": "SELECT * FROM IPv4ToCountry WHERE CountryCode2Letter = 'AU'",
"schema": [
{
"columnName": "IPFrom",
"columnType": "Int"
}
],
"rows": [
{
"[columnName]": "16777216"
}
]
}
We can now execute a query:
query = '''SELECT * FROM IPv4ToCountry WHERE CountryCode2Letter = "AU"'''
res = requests.get(
'https://www.dolthub.com/api/v1alpha1/{}/{}/{}'.format(owner, database, branch),
params={'q': query},
)
res.json()
This yields the results as JSON, with both schema and data:
{'query_execution_status': 'RowLimit',
'query_execution_message': '',
'repository_owner': 'dolthub',
'repository_name': 'ip-to-country',
'commit_ref': 'main',
'sql_query': 'SELECT * FROM IPv4ToCountry WHERE CountryCode2Letter = "AU"',
'schema': [{'columnName': 'IPFrom',
'columnType': 'Int'},
{'columnName': 'IpTo', 'columnType': 'Int'},
{'columnName': 'Registry', 'columnType': 'String'},
{'columnName': 'AssignedDate', 'columnType': 'Int'},
{'columnName': 'CountryCode2Letter',
'columnType': 'String'},
{'columnName': 'CountryCode3Letter',
'columnType': 'String'},
{'columnName': 'Country', 'columnType': 'String'}],
'rows': [{'IPFrom': '16777216',
'IpTo': '16777471',
'Registry': 'apnic',
'AssignedDate': '1313020800',
'CountryCode2Letter': 'AU',
'CountryCode3Letter': 'AUS',
'Country': 'Australia'},
.
.
.
]}
As a reminder, this API is in Alpha version, and we will continue to flesh this out, as well as improve query performance, over time.
You can also explore our SQL API on DoltHub whenever you execute a query:

Writing
Since adding, updating, and deleting data can take a bit of time to execute against larger databases, we made the writable API asynchronous. Therefore we needed to add two HTTP endpoints for executing these kinds of queries using the SQL API.
We can use our SHAQ database as an example. These are the steps we'd take to update a player's id in the player stats table.
1. Run query
Executes SQL write against to_branch (will be created from from_branch if it doesn't exist). If no query is provided, will merge to_branch into from_branch.
The name of the database owner.
dolthub
The name of the database.
SHAQ
The base branch.
main
The branch to write to. Will be created from the from_branch if it doesn't exist.
feature
The SQL query to execute. Use the request body instead for larger queries.
UPDATE player_season_stat_totals SET player_id=714287 WHERE player_id=15404617
SQL write query to execute. Can be used in place of the query parameter for larger queries.
UPDATE player_season_stat_totals SET player_id=714287 WHERE player_id=15404617
POST /api/v1alpha1/{owner}/{database}/write/{from_branch}/{to_branch} HTTP/1.1
Host: www.dolthub.com
authorization: YOUR_API_KEY
Content-Type: application/json
Accept: */*
Content-Length: 90
{
"query": "UPDATE player_season_stat_totals SET player_id=714287 WHERE player_id=15404617"
}
{
"query_execution_status": "Success",
"query_execution_message": "Operation created. Poll the operation endpoint to see the execution status of this query.",
"repository_owner": "dolthub",
"repository_name": "SHAQ",
"from_branch_name": "main",
"to_branch_name": "main",
"query:": "UPDATE player_season_stat_totals SET player_id=714287 WHERE player_id=15404617",
"operation_name:": "operations/72abb56b-d478-43ae-9a2d-c9602184c7ab"
}
First, we want to hit the write endpoint with our UPDATE
query. This will start an asynchronous operation.
owner, database, from_branch, to_branch = 'dolthub', 'SHAQ', 'main', 'update-player'
query = '''UPDATE player_season_stat_totals SET player_id=714287 WHERE player_id=15404617'''
headers = {
'authorization': 'token [see Authentication section for token]'
}
write_res = requests.post(
f'https://www.dolthub.com/api/v1alpha1/{owner}/{database}/write/{from_branch}/{to_branch}',
params={'q': query},
headers=headers,
)
write_json = write_res.json()
The main
branch already exists in the database, and providing a <to_branch>
that doesn't exist will create this new branch from the <from_branch>
.
The yielded JSON results include an operation_name
.
{
"query_execution_status": "Success",
"query_execution_message": "Operation created. Poll the operation endpoint to see the execution status of this query.",
"repository_owner": "dolthub",
"repository_name": "SHAQ",
"to_branch_name": "update-player",
"from_branch_name": "main",
"query": "UPDATE player_season_stat_totals SET player_id=714287 WHERE player_id=15404617",
"operation_name": "operations/72abb56b-d478-43ae-9a2d-c9602184c7ab"
}
2. Poll operation
Poll the operation to check if the SQL write operation is done
The name of the database owner.
dolthub
The name of the database.
SHAQ
The name of the operation
operations/72abb56b-d478-43ae-9a2d-c9602184c7ab
GET /api/v1alpha1/{owner}/{database}/write HTTP/1.1
Host: www.dolthub.com
authorization: YOUR_API_KEY
Accept: */*
{
"_id": "operations/72abb56b-d478-43ae-9a2d-c9602184c7ab",
"done": true,
"res_details": {
"query_execution_status": "Success",
"query_execution_message": "Query OK, 2 rows affected. Rows matched: 2 Changed: 2 Warnings: 0.",
"owner_name": "dolthub",
"repository_name": "SHAQ",
"from_commit_id": "518ue176ec13qf563e87uoerkqqepood",
"to_commit_id": "5sp7i0bov6itma2u04dpk15ui24lrigp"
}
}
operation_name
can be used to poll the second endpoint to check if the operation is done.
def get_operation(op_name):
op_res = requests.get(
f'https://www.dolthub.com/api/v1alpha1/{owner}/{database}/write',
params={'operationName': op_name},
headers=headers,
)
return op_res.json()
def poll_operation(op_name):
done = False
while done == False:
poll_res = get_operation(op_name)
done = poll_res['done']
if done:
return poll_res
else:
time.sleep(3)
res = poll_operation(write_json['operation_name'])
A done
operation will yield a response that includes some query metadata, including from and to commit ids.
{
"_id": "operations/72abb56b-d478-43ae-9a2d-c9602184c7ab",
"done": true,
"res_details": {
"query_execution_status": "Success",
"query_execution_message": "Query OK, 2 rows affected. Rows matched: 2 Changed: 2 Warnings: 0.",
"owner_name": "tbantle",
"repository_name": "SHAQ",
"from_commit_id": "518ue176ec13qf563e87uoerkqqepood",
"to_commit_id": "5sp7i0bov6itma2u04dpk15ui24lrigp"
}
}
3. View changes
Since a lot of Dolt's functionality is exposed via SQL, we can use the commit ids to query the dolt_commit_diff_$tablename
table to view the resulting diff from our UPDATE
query.
from_commit, to_commit = res['res_details']['from_commit_id'], res['res_details']['to_commit_id']
query = f'''SELECT from_player_id, to_player_id, diff_type FROM `dolt_commit_diff_player_season_stat_totals` WHERE from_commit="{from_commit}" AND to_commit="{to_commit}"'''
diff_res = requests.get(
f'https://www.dolthub.com/api/v1alpha1/{owner}/{database}/{to_branch}',
params={'q': query},
headers=headers,
)
diff_res.json()
We can repeat this process with as many queries as we want. Every query will create a commit on the <from_branch>
.
4. Merge changes
Once we're satisfied with our changes, we can merge our branches by hitting the first endpoint with an empty query.
merge_res = requests.post(
f'https://www.dolthub.com/api/v1alpha1/{owner}/{database}/write/{to_branch}/{from_branch}',
params=None,
headers=headers,
)
merge_json = merge_res.json()
poll_operation(merge_json['operation_name'])
You can learn more about using the writable SQL API here.
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