PRQL Changelog

0.11.1 — 2023-12-26

0.11.1 fixes a couple of small bugs; it comes a few days after 0.11.

This release has 16 commits from 6 contributors. Selected changes:

Features:

  • Infer the type of array literals to be the union of types of its items. (@aljazerzen, #3989)
  • prql module is added and the prql_version function is renamed to the prql.version function. The old prql_version function is deprecated and will be removed in the future release. (@eitsupi, #4006)

Fixes:

  • Do not compile to DISTINCT ON when take n is used with group for the targets clickhouse, duckdb and postgres. (@PrettyWood, #3988)
  • Fix take n rows for mssql dialect by switching from TOP to FETCH (@PrettyWood, #3994)

0.11.0 — 2023-12-19

0.11.0 introduces new date, text & math modules with lots of standard functions, including a new date.to_text function. It contains a few bugs fixes, and lots of internal improvements to the compiler.

This release has 119 commits from 9 contributors. Selected changes:

Language:

  • Breaking: group’s by columns are now excluded from the partition. (#3490)
  • Breaking: round is now in the math module and needs to be called via math.round. (#3928)
  • Breaking: lower and upper are now in the text module and need to be called via text.lower and text.upper. (#3913, #3973)

Features:

  • The std.in function now supports a list of values (@PrettyWood, #3883)
  • Most standard mathematical functions are now supported: abs, floor, ceil, pi, exp, ln, log10, log, sqrt, degrees, radians, cos, acos, sin, asin, tan, atan, pow and round.
    Those functions are in the math module (@PrettyWood, #3909, #3916 & 3928)
  • Most standard string functions are now supported: ltrim, rtrim, trim, length, extract, replace. Utility functions starts_with, contains and ends_with are also available.
    Those functions are in the text module (@PrettyWood, #3913, #3973)
  • Formatting a date to a text is now available for Clickhouse, DuckDB, MySQL, MSSQL and Postgres. A new date module has been added with the to_text function (@PrettyWood, #3951, #3954 & #3955)

Fixes:

  • Fix an issue with arithmetic precedence (@max-sixty, #3846)
  • + and - can be used after a cast (@PrettyWood, #3923)
  • The Lezer grammar had plenty of improvements and fixes. (@vanillajonathan)

Web:

  • The Playground now uses Vite. (@vanillajonathan)

Internal changes:

  • Bump prql-compiler’s MSRV to 1.70.0 (@eitsupi, #3876)

New Contributors:

  • @PrettyWood, with #3883

0.10.1 — 2023-11-14

0.10.1 is a small release containing some internal fixes of the compiler.

This release has 36 commits from 7 contributors. Selected changes:

Features:

  • The std.sql.read_csv function and the std.sql.read_parquet function supports the sql.glaredb target. (@eitsupi, #3749)

Fixes:

  • Fix the bug of compiling to DISTINCT ON when take 1 is used with group by for the targets sql.clickhouse, sql.duckdb and sql.postgres. (@aljazerzen, #3792)

Integrations:

  • Enable integration tests for GlareDB. (@eitsupi, #3749)
  • trapd00r/LS_COLORS, a collection of LS_COLORS definitions colorizes .prql files. (@vanillajonathan)
  • vivid, a themeable LS_COLORS generator colorizes .prql files. (@vanillajonathan)
  • colorls, displays .prql files with a database icon. (@vanillajonathan)
  • Emoji File Icons, a VS Code extension displays .prql files with a database emoji icon. (@vanillajonathan)
  • eza, a modern ls replacement colorizes .prql files. (@vanillajonathan)
  • lsd, next gen ls command displays .prql files with a database icon. (@vanillajonathan)

0.10.0 — 2023-10-26

0.10.0 contains lots of small improvements, including support for new types of literal notation, support for read_* functions in more dialects, playground improvements, and a better Lezer grammar (which we’re planning on using for a Jupyter extension).

This release has 155 commits from 9 contributors. Selected changes:

Language:

  • Breaking: Case syntax now uses brackets [] rather than braces {}. To convert previous PRQL queries to this new syntax simply change case { ... } to case [ ... ]. (@AaronMoat, #3517)

Features:

  • Breaking: The std.sql.read_csv function is now compiled to read_csv by default. Please set the target sql.duckdb to use the DuckDB’s read_csv_auto function as previously. (@eitsupi, #3599)
  • Breaking: The std.every function is renamed to std.all (@aljazerzen, #3703)
  • The std.sql.read_csv function and the std.sql.read_parquet function supports the sql.clickhouse target. (@eitsupi, #1533)
  • Add std.prql_version function to return PRQL version (@hulxv, #3533)
  • A new type anytype is added. (@aljazerzen, #3703)
  • Add support for hex escape sequences in strings. Example "Hello \x51". (@vanillajonathan, #3568)
  • Add support for long Unicode escape sequences. Example "Hello \u{01F422}". (@vanillajonathan, #3569)
  • Add support for binary numerical notation. Example filter status == 0b1111000011110000. (@vanillajonathan, #3661)
  • Add support for hexadecimal numerical notation. Example filter status == 0xff. (@vanillajonathan, #3654)
  • Add support for octal numerical notation. Example filter status == 0o777. (@vanillajonathan, #3672)
  • New compile target sql.glaredb for GlareDB and integration tests for it (However, there is a bug in the test and it is currently not running). (@universalmind303, @scsmithr, @eitsupi, #3669)

Web:

  • Allow cmd-/ (Mac) or ctrl-/ (Windows) to toggle comments in the playground editor (@AaronMoat, #3522)

  • Limit maximum height of the playground editor’s error panel to avoid taking over whole screen (@AaronMoat, #3524)

  • The playground now uses Vite (@vanillajonathan).

Integrations:

  • Add a CLI command prqlc collect to collect a project’s modules into a single file (@aljazerzen, #3739)
  • Add a CLI command prqlc debug expand-pl to parse & and expand into PL without resolving (@aljazerzen, #3739)
  • Bump prqlc’s MSRV to 1.70.0 (@eitsupi, #3521)
  • Pygments, a syntax highlighting library now has syntax highlighting for PRQL. (@vanillajonathan, #3564)
  • chroma, a syntax highlighting library written in Go and used by the static website generator Hugo. (@vanillajonathan, #3597)
  • scc, a source lines of code counter now has support for .prql files. (@vanillajonathan)
  • gcloc a source lines of code counter now has support for .prql files. (@vanillajonathan)
  • cloc a source lines of code counter now has support for .prql files. (@AlDanial)
  • gocloc a source lines of code counter now has support for .prql files. (@vanillajonathan)
  • The Quarto VS Code extension supports editing PRQL code blocks (prqlr is required to render Quarto Markdown with PRQL code blocks). (@jjallaire)

Internal:

  • Rename some of the internal crates, and refactored their paths in the repo. (@aljazerzen, #3683).
  • Add a justfile for developers who prefer that above our Taskfile.yml (@aljazerzen, #3681)

New Contributors:

  • @hulxv, with #3533
  • @AaronMoat, with #3522
  • @jangorecki, with #3634

0.9.5 — 2023-09-16

0.9.5 adds a line-wrapping character, fixes a few bugs, and improves our CI. The release has 77 commits from 8 contributors. Selected changes are below.

Look out for some conference talks coming up over the next few weeks, including QCon SF on Oct 2 and date2day on Oct 12.

Language:

  • A new line-wrapping character, for lines that are long and we want to break up into multiple physical lines. This is slightly different from from many languages — it’s on the subsequent line:

    1. from artists
    2. select is_europe =
    3. \ country == "DE"
    4. \ || country == "FR"
    5. \ || country == "ES"

    This allows for easily commenting out physical lines while maintaining a correct logical line; for example:

    1. from artists
    2. select is_europe =
    3. \ country == "DE"
    4. \ || country == "FR"
    5. \ || country == "FR"
    6. -\ || country == "ES"
    7. +#\ || country == "ES"

    (@max-sixty, #3408)

Fixes:

  • Fix stack overflow on very long queries in Windows debug builds (@max-sixty, #2908)

  • Fix panic when unresolved lineage appears in group or window (@davidot, #3266)

  • Fix a corner-case in handling precedence, and remove unneeded parentheses in some outputs (@max-sixty, #3472)

Web:

  • Compiler panics are now printed to the console (@max-sixty, #3446)

Integrations:

  • Ace, the JavaScript code editor now has syntax highlighting for PRQL. (@vanillajonathan, #3493)

Internal changes:

  • Simplify & speed up lexer (@max-sixty, #3426, #3418)

New Contributors:

  • @davidot, with #3450

0.9.4 — 2023-08-24

0.9.4 is a small release with some improvements and bug fixes in the compiler and prqlc. And, the documentation and CI are continually being improved.

This release has 110 commits from 9 contributors. Selected changes:

Features:

  • Strings can be delimited with any odd number of quote characters. The logic for lexing quotes is now simpler and slightly faster. Escapes in single-quote-delimited strings escape single-quotes rather than double-quotes. (@max-sixty, #3274)

Fixes:

  • S-strings within double braces now parse correctly (@max-sixty, #3265)

Documentation:

  • New docs for strings (@max-sixty, #3281)

Web:

  • Improve syntax highlighting for numbers in the book & website (@max-sixty, #3261)
  • Add ClickHouse integration to docs (@max-sixty, #3251)

Integrations:

  • prqlc no longer displays a prompt when piping a query into its stdin (@max-sixty, #3248).
  • Add a minimal example for use prql-lib with Zig (@vanillajonathan, #3372)

Internal changes:

  • Overhaul our CI to run a cohesive set of tests depending on the specific changes in the PR, and elide all others. This cuts CI latency to less than three minutes for most changes, and enables GitHub’s auto-merge to wait for all relevant tests. It also reduces the CI time on merging to main, by moving some tests to only run on specific path changes or on our nightly run.

    We now have one label we can add to PRs to run more tests — pr-nightly. (@max-sixty, #3317 & others).

  • Auto-merge PRs for backports or pre-commit updates (@max-sixty, #3246)

  • Add a workflow to create an issue when the scheduled nightly workflow fails (@max-sixty, #3304)

New Contributors:

  • @FinnRG, with #3292
  • @sitiom, with #3353

0.9.3 — 2023-08-02

0.9.3 is a small release, with mostly documentation, internal, and CI changes.

This release has 85 commits from 10 contributors.

We’d like to welcome @not-my-profile as someone who has helped with lots of internal refactoring in the past couple of weeks.

New Contributors:

  • @vthriller, with #3171
  • @postmeback, with #3216

0.9.2 — 2023-07-25

0.9.2 is a hotfix release to fix an issue in the 0.9.0 & 0.9.1 release pipelines.

0.9.1 — 2023-07-25

0.9.1 is a hotfix release to fix an issue in the 0.9.0 release pipeline.

0.9.0 — 2023-07-24

0.9.0 is probably PRQL’s biggest ever release. We have dialect-specific standard-libraries, a regex operator, an initial implementation of multiple-file projects & modules, lots of bug fixes, and many many internal changes.

We’ve made a few backward incompatible syntax changes. Most queries will work with a simple find/replace; see below for details.

The release has 421 commits from 12 contributors.

A small selection of the changes:

Language:

  • The major breaking change is a new syntax for lists, which have been renamed to tuples, and are now represented with braces {} rather than brackets [].

    To convert previous PRQL queries to this new syntax simply change [ ... ] to { ... }.

    We made the syntax change to incorporate arrays. Almost every major language uses [] for arrays. We are adopting that convention — arrays use [], tuples will use {}. (Though we recognize that {} for tuples is also rare (Hi, Erlang!), but didn’t want to further load parentheses with meaning.)

    Arrays are conceptually similar to columns — their elements have a single type. Array syntax can’t contain assignments.

    As part of this, we’ve also formalized tuples as containing both individual items (select {foo, baz}), and assignments (select {foo=bar, baz=fuz}).

  • Some significant changes regarding SQL dialects:

    • Operators and functions can be defined on per-dialect basis. (@aljazerzen, #2681)
    • Breaking: The sql.duckdb target supports DuckDB 0.8 (@eitsupi, #2810).
    • Breaking: The sql.hive target is removed (@eitsupi, #2837).

  • New arithmetic operators. These compile to different function or operator depending on the target.

    • Breaking: Operator / now always performs floating division (@aljazerzen, #2684). See the Division docs for details.

    • Truncated integer division operator // (@aljazerzen, #2684). See the Division docs for details.

    • Regex search operator ~= (@max-sixty, #2458). An example:

      1. from tracks
      2. filter (name ~= "Love")

      …compiles to;

      1. SELECT
      2.   *
      3. FROM
      4.   tracks
      5. WHERE
      6.   REGEXP(name, 'Love')

      …though the exact form differs by dialect; see the Regex docs for more details.

  • New aggregation functions: every, any, average, and concat_array. Breaking: Remove avg in favor of average.

  • Breaking: We’ve changed our function declaration syntax to match other declarations. Functions were one of the first language constructs in PRQL, and since then we’ve added normal declarations there’s no compelling reason for functions to be different.

    1. let add = a b -> a + b

    Previously, this was:

    1. func add a b -> a + b

  • Experimental modules, which allow importing declarations from other files. Docs are forthcoming.

  • Relation literals create a relation (a “table”) as an array of tuples. This example demonstrates the new syntax for arrays [] and tuples {}. (@aljazerzen, #2605)

    1. from [{a=5, b=false}, {a=6, b=true}]
    2. filter b == true
    3. select a

  • this can be used to refer to the current pipeline, for situations where plain column name would be ambiguous:

    1. from x
    2. derive sum = my_column
    3. select this.sum   # does not conflict with `std.sum`

    Within a join transform, there is also a reference to the right relation: that.

  • Breaking: functions count, rank and row_number now require an argument of the array to operate on. In most cases you can directly replace count with count this. The non_null argument of count has been removed.

Features:

  • We’ve changed how we handle colors.

    Options::color is deprecated and has no effect. Code which consumes prql_compiler::compile should instead accept the output with colors and use a library such as anstream to handle the presentation of colors. To ensure minimal disruption, prql_compiler will currently strip color codes when a standard environment variable such as CLI_COLOR=0 is set or when it detects stderr is not a TTY.

    We now use the anstream library in prqlc & prql-compiler.

    (@max-sixty, #2773)

  • prqlc can now show backtraces when the standard backtrace env var (RUST_BACKTRACE) is active. (@max-sixty, #2751)

Fixes:

  • Numbers expressed with scientific notation — 1e9 — are now handled correctly by the compiler (@max-sixty, #2865).

Integrations:

  • prql-python now provides type hints (@philpep, #2912)

Internal changes:

  • Annotations in PRQL. These have limited support but are currently used to specify binding strengths. They’re modeled after Rust’s annotations, but with @ syntax, more similar to traditional decorators. (#2729)

    1. @{binding_strength=11}
    2. let mod = l r -> s"{l} % {r}"

  • Remove BigQuery’s special handling of quoted identifiers, now that our module system handles its semantics (@max-sixty, #2609).

  • ClickHouse is tested in CI (@eitsupi, #2815).

New Contributors:

  • @maxmcd, with #2533
  • @khoa165, with #2876
  • @philpep, with #2912
  • @not-my-profile, with #2971

0.8.1 — 2023-04-29

0.8.1 is a small release with a new list-targets command in prqlc, some documentation improvements, and some internal improvements.

This release has 41 commits from 8 contributors.

From the broader perspective of the project, we’re increasing the relative prioritization of it being easy for folks to actually use PRQL — either with existing tools, or a tool we’d build. We’ll be thinking about & discussing the best way to do that over the next few weeks.

0.8.0 — 2023-04-14

0.8.0 renames the and & or operators to && & || respectively, reorganizes the Syntax section in the book, and introduces read_parquet & read_csv functions for reading files with DuckDB.

This release has 38 commits from 8 contributors. Selected changes:

Features:

  • Rename and to && and or to ||. Operators which are symbols are now consistently infix, while “words” are now consistently functions (@aljazerzen, #2422).

  • New functions read_parquet and read_csv, which mirror the DuckDB functions, instructing the database to read from files (@max-sixty, #2409).

0.7.1 — 2023-04-03

0.7.1 is a hotfix release to fix prql-js’s npm install behavior when being installed as a dependency.

This release has 17 commits from 4 contributors.

0.7.0 — 2023-04-01

0.7.0 is a fairly small release in terms of new features, with lots of internal improvements, such as integration tests with a whole range of DBs, a blog post on Pi day, RFCs for a type system, and more robust language bindings.

There’s a very small breaking change to the rust API, hence the minor version bump.

Here’s our April 2023 Update, from our Readme:

April 2023 update

PRQL is being actively developed by a growing community. It’s ready to use by the intrepid, either as part of one of our supported extensions, or within your own tools, using one of our supported language bindings.

PRQL still has some minor bugs and some missing features, and probably is only ready to be rolled out to non-technical teams for fairly simple queries.

Here’s our current Roadmap and our Milestones.

Our immediate focus for the code is on:

  • Building out the next few big features, including types and modules.
  • Ensuring our supported features feel extremely robust; resolving any priority bugs.

We’re also spending time thinking about:

  • Making it really easy to start using PRQL. We’re doing that by building integrations with tools that folks already use; for example our VS Code extension & Jupyter integration. If there are tools you’re familiar with that you think would be open to integrating with PRQL, please let us know in an issue.
  • Making it easier to contribute to the compiler. We have a wide group of contributors to the project, but contributions to the compiler itself are quite concentrated. We’re keen to expand this; #1840 for feedback.

The release has 131 commits from 10 contributors. Particular credit goes to to @eitsupi & @jelenkee, who have made significant contributions, and @vanillajonathan, whose prolific contribution include our growing language bindings.

A small selection of the changes:

Features:

  • prqlc compile adds --color & --include-signature-comment options. (@max-sixty, #2267)

Web:

  • Added the PRQL snippets from the book to the Playground (@jelenkee, #2197)

Internal changes:

  • Breaking: The compile function’s Options now includes a color member, which determines whether error messages use ANSI color codes. This is technically a breaking change to the API. (@max-sixty, #2251)
  • The Error struct now exposes the MessageKind enum. (@vanillajonathan, #2307)
  • Integration tests run in CI with DuckDB, SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQL Server (@jelenkee, #2286)

New Contributors:

  • @k-nut, with #2294

0.6.1 — 2023-03-12

0.6.1 is a small release containing an internal refactoring and improved bindings for C, PHP & .NET.

This release has 54 commits from 6 contributors. Selected changes:

Fixes:

  • No longer incorrectly compile to DISTINCT when a take 1 refers to a different set of columns than are in the group. (@max-sixty, with thanks to @cottrell, #2109)
  • The version specification of the dependency Chumsky was bumped from 0.9.0 to 0.9.2. 0.9.0 has a bug that causes an infinite loop. (@eitsupi, #2110)

Documentation:

Integrations:

  • [prql-lib] Added C++ header file. (@vanillajonathan, #2126)

Internal changes:

  • Many of the items that were in the root of the repo have been aggregated into web & bindings, simplifying the repo’s structure. There’s also grammars & packages (@max-sixty, #2135, #2117, #2121).

0.6.0 — 2023-03-08

0.6.0 introduces a rewritten parser, giving us the ability to dramatically improve error messages, renames switch to case and includes lots of minor improvements and fixes. It also introduces loop, which compiles to WITH RECURSIVE, as a highly experimental feature.

There are a few cases of breaking changes, including switching switch to case, in case that’s confusing. There are also some minor parsing changes outlined below.

This release has 108 commits from 11 contributors. Selected changes:

Features:

  • Add a (highly experimental) loop language feature, which translates to WITH RECURSIVE. We expect changes and refinements in upcoming releases. (#1642, @aljazerzen)

  • Rename the experimental switch function to case given it more closely matches the traditional semantics of case. (@max-sixty, #2036)

  • Change the case syntax to use => instead of -> to distinguish it from function syntax.

  • Convert parser from pest to Chumsky (@aljazerzen, #1818)

    • Improved error messages, and the potential to make even better in the future. Many of these improvements come from error recovery.
    • String escapes (\n \t).
    • Raw strings that don’t escape backslashes.
    • String interpolations can only contain identifiers and not any expression.
    • Operator associativity has been changed from right-to-left to left-to-right to be more similar to other conventional languages.
    • and now has a higher precedence than or (of same reason as the previous point).
    • Dates, times and timestamps have stricter parsing rules.
    • let, func, prql, case are now treated as keywords.
    • Float literals without fraction part are not allowed anymore (1.).

  • Add a --format option to prqlc parse which can return the AST in YAML (@max-sixty, #1962)

  • Add a new subcommand prqlc jinja. (@aljazerzen, #1722)

  • Breaking: prql-compiler no longer passes text containing {{ & }} through to the output. (@aljazerzen, #1722)

    For example, the following PRQL query

    1. from {{foo}}

    was compiled to the following SQL previously, but now it raises an error.

    1. SELECT
    2.   *
    3. FROM
    4.   {{ foo }}

    This pass-through feature existed for integration with dbt.

    We’re again considering how to best integrate with dbt, and this change is based on the idea that the jinja macro should run before the PRQL compiler.

    If you’re interested in dbt integration, subscribe or 👍 to https://github.com/dbt-labs/dbt-core/pull/5982.

  • A new compile target "sql.any". When "sql.any" is used as the target of the compile function’s option, the target contained in the query header will be used. (@aljazerzen, #1995)

  • Support for SQL parameters with similar syntax (#1957, @aljazerzen)

  • Allow : to be elided in timezones, such as 0800 in @2020-01-01T13:19:55-0800 (@max-sixty, #1991).

  • Add std.upper and std.lower functions for changing string casing (@Jelenkee, #2019).

Fixes:

  • prqlc compile returns a non-zero exit code for invalid queries. (@max-sixty, #1924)
  • Identifiers can contain any alphabetic unicode characters (@max-sixty, #2003)

Documentation:

  • Operator precedence (@aljazerzen, #1818)
  • Error messages for invalid queries are displayed in the book (@max-sixty, #2015)

Integrations:

  • [prql-php] Added PHP bindings. (@vanillajonathan, #1860)
  • [prql-dotnet] Added .NET bindings. (@vanillajonathan, #1917)
  • [prql-lib] Added C header file. (@vanillajonathan, #1879)
  • Added a workflow building a .deb on each release. (Note that it’s not yet published on each release). (@vanillajonathan, #1883)
  • Added a workflow building a .rpm on each release. (Note that it’s not yet published on each release). (@vanillajonathan, #1918)
  • Added a workflow building a Snap package on each release. (@vanillajonathan, #1881)

Internal changes:

  • Test that the output of our nascent autoformatter can be successfully compiled into SQL. Failing examples are now clearly labeled. (@max-sixty, #2016)
  • Definition files have been added to configure Dev Containers for Rust development environment. (@eitsupi, #1893, #2025, #2028)

New Contributors:

  • @linux-china, with #1971
  • @Jelenkee, with #2019

0.5.2 — 2023-02-18

0.5.2 is a tiny release to fix an build issue in yesterday’s prql-js 0.5.1 release.

This release has 7 commits from 2 contributors.

New Contributors:

  • @matthias-Q, with #1873

0.5.1 — 2023-02-17

0.5.1 contains a few fixes, and another change to how bindings handle default target / dialects.

This release has 53 commits from 7 contributors. Selected changes:

Fixes:

  • Delegate dividing literal integers to the DB. Previously integer division was executed during PRQL compilation, which could be confusing given that behavior is different across DBs. Other arithmetic operations are still executed during compilation. (@max-sixty, #1747)

Documentation:

  • Add docs on the from_text transform (@max-sixty, #1756)

Integrations:

  • [prql-js] Default compile target changed from Sql(Generic) to Sql(None). (@eitsupi, #1856)
  • [prql-python] Compilation options can now be specified from Python. (@eitsupi, #1807)
  • [prql-python] Default compile target changed from Sql(Generic) to Sql(None). (@eitsupi, #1861)

New Contributors:

  • @vanillajonathan, with #1766

0.5.0 — 2023-02-08

0.5.0 contains a few fixes, some improvements to bindings, lots of docs improvements, and some work on forthcoming features. It contains one breaking change in the compiler’s Options interface.

This release has 74 commits from 12 contributors. Selected changes:

Features:

  • Change public API to use target instead of dialect in preparation for feature work (@aljazerzen, #1684)

  • prqlc watch command which watches filesystem for changes and compiles .prql files to .sql (@aljazerzen, #1708)

Fixes:

  • Support double brackets in s-strings which aren’t symmetric (@max-sixty, #1650)
  • Support Postgres’s Interval syntax (@max-sixty, #1649)
  • Fixed tests for prql-elixir with MacOS (@kasvith, #1707)

Documentation:

  • Add a documentation test for prql-compiler, update prql-compiler README, and include the README in the prql book section for Rust bindings. The code examples in the README are included and tested as doctests in the prql-compiler (@nkicg6, #1679)

Internal changes:

  • Add tests for all PRQL website examples to prql-python to ensure compiled results match expected SQL (@nkicg6, #1719)

New Contributors:

  • @ruslandoga, with #1628
  • @RalfNorthman, with #1632
  • @nicot, with #1662

0.4.2 — 2023-01-25

Features:

  • New from_text format-arg string-arg function that supports JSON and CSV formats. format-arg can be format:csv or format:json. string-arg can be a string in any format. (@aljazerzen & @snth, #1514)

    1. from_text format:csv """
    2. a,b,c
    3. 1,2,3
    4. 4,5,6
    5. """
    1. from_text format:json '''
    2.     [{"a": 1, "b": "x", "c": false }, {"a": 4, "b": "y", "c": null }]
    3. '''
    1. from_text format:json '''{
    2.     "columns": ["a", "b", "c"],
    3.     "data": [
    4.         [1, "x", false],
    5.         [4, "y", null]
    6.     ]
    7. }'''

    For now, the argument is limited to string constants.

Fixes

  • Export constructor for SQLCompileOptions (@bcho, #1621)
  • Remove backticks in count_distinct (@aljazerzen, #1611)

New Contributors

  • @1Kinoti, with #1596
  • @veenaamb, with #1614

0.4.1 — 2023-01-18

0.4.1 comes a few days after 0.4.0, with a couple of features and the release of prqlc, the CLI crate.

0.4.1 has 35 commits from 6 contributors.

Features:

  • Inferred column names include the relation name (@aljazerzen, #1550):

    1. from albums
    2. select title # name used to be inferred as title only
    3. select albums.title # so using albums was not possible here

  • Quoted identifiers such as dir/*.parquet are passed through to SQL. (@max-sixty, #1516).

  • The CLI is installed with cargo install prqlc. The binary was renamed in 0.4.0 but required an additional --features flag, which has been removed in favor of this new crate (@max-sixty & @aljazerzen, #1549).

New Contributors:

  • @fool1280, with #1554
  • @nkicg6, with #1567

0.4.0 — 2023-01-15

0.4.0 brings lots of new features including case, select ![] and numbers with underscores. We have initial (unpublished) bindings to Elixir. And there’s the usual improvements to fixes & documentation (only a minority are listed below in this release).

0.4.0 also has some breaking changes: table is let, dialect is renamed to target, and the compiler’s API has changed. Full details below.

Features:

  • Defining a temporary table is now expressed as let rather than table (@aljazerzen, #1315). See the tables docs for details.

  • Experimental: The case function sets a variable to a value based on one of several expressions (@aljazerzen, #1278).

    1. derive var = case [
    2.   score <= 10 -> "low",
    3.   score <= 30 -> "medium",
    4.   score <= 70 -> "high",
    5.   true -> "very high",
    6. ]

    …compiles to:

    1. SELECT
    2.   *,
    3.   CASE
    4.     WHEN score <= 10 THEN 'low'
    5.     WHEN score <= 30 THEN 'medium'
    6.     WHEN score <= 70 THEN 'high'
    7.     ELSE 'very high'
    8.   END AS var
    9. FROM
    10.   bar

    Check out the case docs for more details.

  • Experimental: Columns can be excluded by name with select (@aljazerzen, #1329)

    1. from albums
    2. select ![title, composer]

  • Experimental: append transform, equivalent to UNION ALL in SQL. (@aljazerzen, #894)

    1. from employees
    2. append managers

    Check out the append docs for more details.

  • Numbers can contain underscores, which can make reading long numbers easier (@max-sixty, #1467):

    1. from numbers
    2. select {
    3.     small = 1.000_000_1,
    4.     big = 5_000_000,
    5. }

  • The SQL output contains a comment with the PRQL compiler version (@aljazerzen, #1322)

  • dialect is renamed to target, and its values are prefixed with sql. (@max-sixty, #1388); for example:

    1. prql target:sql.bigquery  # previously was `dialect:bigquery`
    3. from employees

    This gives us the flexibility to target other languages than SQL in the long term.

  • Tables definitions can contain a bare s-string (@max-sixty, #1422), which enables us to include a full CTE of SQL, for example:

    1. let grouping = s"""
    2.   SELECT SUM(a)
    3.   FROM tbl
    4.   GROUP BY
    5.     GROUPING SETS
    6.     ((b, c, d), (d), (b, d))
    7. """

  • Ranges supplied to in can be half-open (@aljazerzen, #1330).

  • The crate’s external API has changed to allow for compiling to intermediate representation. This also affects bindings. See prql-compiler docs for more details.

Fixes:

[This release, the changelog only contains a subset of fixes]

  • Allow interpolations in table s-strings (@aljazerzen, #1337)

Documentation:

[This release, the changelog only contains a subset of documentation improvements]

  • Add docs on aliases in Select
  • Add JS template literal and multiline example (@BCsabaEngine, #1432)
  • JS template literal and multiline example (@BCsabaEngine, #1432)
  • Improve prql-compiler docs & examples (@aljazerzen, #1515)
  • Fix string highlighting in book (@max-sixty, #1264)

Web:

  • The playground allows querying some sample data. As before, the result updates on every keystroke. (@aljazerzen, #1305)

Integrations:

[This release, the changelog only contains a subset of integration improvements]

  • Added Elixir integration exposing PRQL functions as NIFs (#1500, @kasvith)
  • Exposed Elixir flavor with exceptions (#1513, @kasvith)
  • Rename prql-compiler binary to prqlc (@aljazerzen #1515)

Internal changes:

[This release, the changelog only contains a subset of internal changes]

  • Add parsing for negative select (@max-sixty, #1317)
  • Allow for additional builtin functions (@aljazerzen, #1325)
  • Add an automated check for typos (@max-sixty, #1421)
  • Add tasks for running playground & book (@max-sixty, #1265)
  • Add tasks for running tests on every file change (@max-sixty, #1380)

New contributors:

  • @EArazli, with #1359
  • @boramalper, with #1362
  • @allurefx, with #1377
  • @bcho, with #1375
  • @JettChenT, with #1385
  • @BlurrechDev, with #1411
  • @BCsabaEngine, with #1432
  • @kasvith, with #1500

0.3.1 - 2022-12-03

0.3.1 brings a couple of small improvements and fixes.

Features:

  • Support for using s-strings for from (#1197, @aljazerzen)

    1. from s"SELECT * FROM employees WHERE foo > 5"

  • Helpful error message when referencing a table in an s-string (#1203, @aljazerzen)

Fixes:

  • Multiple columns with same name created (#1211, @aljazerzen)
  • Renaming via select breaks preceding sorting (#1204, @aljazerzen)
  • Same column gets selected multiple times (#1186, @mklopets)

Internal:

  • Update Github Actions and Workflows to current version numbers (and avoid using Node 12)

0.3.0 — 2022-11-29

🎉 0.3.0 is the biggest ever change in PRQL’s compiler, rewriting much of the internals: the compiler now has a semantic understanding of expressions, including resolving names & building a DAG of column lineage 🎉.

While the immediate changes to the language are modest — some long-running bugs are fixed — this unlocks the development of many of the project’s long-term priorities, such as type-checking & auto-complete. And it simplifies the building of our next language features, such as match-case expressions, unions & table expressions.

@aljazerzen has (mostly single-handedly) done this work over the past few months. The project owes him immense appreciation.

Breaking changes:

We’ve had to make some modest breaking changes for 0.3:

  • Pipelines must start with from. For example, a pipeline with only derive foo = 5, with no from transform, is no longer valid. Depending on demand for this feature, it would be possible to add this back.

  • Shared column names now require == in a join. The existing approach is ambiguous to the compiler — id in the following example could be a boolean column.

    1. from employees
    2. -join positions [id]
    3. +join positions [==id]

  • Table references containing periods must be surrounded by backticks. For example, when referencing a schema name:

    1. -from public.sometable
    2. +from `public.sometable`

Features:

  • Change self equality op to == (#1176, @aljazerzen)
  • Add logging (@aljazerzen)
  • Add clickhouse dialect (#1090, @max-sixty)
  • Allow namespaces & tables to contain . (#1079, @aljazerzen)

Fixes:

  • Deduplicate column appearing in SELECT multiple times (#1186, @aljazerzen)
  • Fix uppercase table names (#1184, @aljazerzen)
  • Omit table name when only one ident in SELECT (#1094, @aljazerzen)

Documentation:

  • Add chapter on semantics’ internals (@aljazerzen, #1028)
  • Add note about nesting variables in s-strings (@max-sixty, #1163)

Internal changes:

  • Flatten group and window (#1120, @aljazerzen)
  • Split ast into expr and stmt (@aljazerzen)
  • Refactor associativity (#1156, @aljazerzen)
  • Rename Ident constructor to from_name (#1084, @aljazerzen)
  • Refactor rq folding (#1177, @aljazerzen)
  • Add tests for reported bugs fixes in semantic (#1174, @aljazerzen)
  • Bump duckdb from 0.5.0 to 0.6.0 (#1132)
  • Bump once_cell from 1.15.0 to 1.16.0 (#1101)
  • Bump pest from 2.4.0 to 2.5.0 (#1161)
  • Bump pest_derive from 2.4.0 to 2.5.0 (#1179)
  • Bump sqlparser from 0.25.0 to 0.27.0 (#1131)
  • Bump trash from 2.1.5 to 3.0.0 (#1178)

0.2.11 — 2022-11-20

0.2.11 contains a few helpful fixes.

Work continues on our semantic refactor — look out for 0.3.0 soon! Many thanks to @aljazerzen for his continued contributions to this.

Note: 0.2.10 was skipped due to this maintainer’s inability to read his own docs on bumping versions…

Features:

  • Detect when compiler version is behind query version (@MarinPostma, #1058)
  • Add __version__ to prql-python package (@max-sixty, #1034)

Fixes:

  • Fix nesting of expressions with equal binding strength and left associativity, such as a - (b - c) (@max-sixty, #1136)
  • Retain floats without significant digits as floats (@max-sixty, #1141)

Documentation:

  • Add documentation of prqlr bindings (@eitsupi, #1091)
  • Add a ‘Why PRQL’ section to the website (@max-sixty, #1098)
  • Add @snth to core-devs (@max-sixty, #1050)

Internal changes:

  • Use workspace versioning (@max-sixty, #1065)

0.2.9 — 2022-10-14

0.2.9 is a small release containing a bug fix for empty strings.

Fixes:

  • Fix parsing of empty strings (@aljazerzen, #1024)

0.2.8 — 2022-10-10

0.2.8 is another modest release with some fixes, doc improvements, bindings improvements, and lots of internal changes. Note that one of the fixes causes the behavior of round and cast to change slightly — though it’s handled as a fix rather than a breaking change in semantic versioning.

Fixes:

  • Change order of the round & cast function parameters to have the column last; for example round 2 foo_col / cast int foo. This is consistent with other functions, and makes piping possible:

    1. derive [
    2.   gross_salary = (salary + payroll_tax | as int),
    3.   gross_salary_rounded = (gross_salary | round 0),
    4. ]

Documentation:

  • Split DEVELOPMENT.md from CONTRIBUTING.md (@richb-hanover, #1010)
  • Make s-strings more prominent in website intro (@max-sixty, #982)

Web:

  • Add GitHub star count to website (@max-sixty, #990)

Integrations:

  • Expose a shortened error message, in particular for the VS Code extension (@aljazerzen, #1005)

Internal changes:

  • Specify 1.60.0 as minimum Rust version (@max-sixty, #1011)
  • Remove old wee-alloc code (@max-sixty, #1013)
  • Upgrade clap to version 4 (@aj-bagwell, #1004)
  • Improve book-building script in Taskfile (@max-sixty, #989)
  • Publish website using an artifact rather than a long-lived branch (@max-sixty, #1009)

0.2.7 — 2022-09-17

0.2.7 is a fairly modest release, six weeks after 0.2.6. We have some more significant features, including a union operator and an overhaul of our type system, as open PRs which will follow in future releases.

We also have new features in the VS Code extension, courtesy of @jiripospisil, including a live output panel.

Fixes:

  • range_of_ranges checks the Range end is smaller than its start (@shuozeli, #946)

Documentation:

  • Improve various docs (@max-sixty, #974, #971, #972, #970, #925)
  • Add reference to EdgeDB’s blog post in our FAQ (@max-sixty, #922)
  • Fix typos (@kianmeng, #943)

Integrations:

  • Add prql-lib, enabling language bindings with go (@sigxcpu76, #923)
  • Fix line numbers in JS exceptions (@charlie-sanders, #929)

Internal changes:

  • Lock the version of the rust-toolchain, with auto-updates (@max-sixty, #926, #927)

0.2.6 — 2022-08-05

Fixes:

  • Adjust fmt to only escape names when needed (@aljazerzen, #907)
  • Fix quoting on upper case table names (@max-sixty, #893)
  • Fix scoping of identical column names from multiple tables (@max-sixty, #908)
  • Fix parse error on newlines in a table (@sebastiantoh 🆕, #902)
  • Fix quoting of upper case table names (@max-sixty, #893)

Documentation:

  • Add docs on Architecture (@aljazerzen, #904)
  • Add Changelog (@max-sixty, #890 #891)

Internal changes:

  • Start trial using Conventional Commits (@max-sixty, #889)
  • Add crates.io release workflow, docs (@max-sixty, #887)

0.2.5 - 2022-07-29

0.2.5 is a very small release following 0.2.4 yesterday. It includes:

  • Add the ability to represent single brackets in an s-string, with two brackets (#752, @max-sixty)
  • Fix the “Copy to Clipboard” command in the Playground, for Firefox (#880, @mklopets)

0.2.4 - 2022-07-28

0.2.4 is a small release following 0.2.3 a few days ago. The 0.2.4 release includes:

  • Enrich our CLI, adding commands to get different stages of the compilation process (@aljazerzen , #863)
  • Fix multiple take n statements in a query, leading to duplicate proxy columns in generated SQL (@charlie-sanders)
  • Fix BigQuery quoting of identifiers in SELECT statements (@max-sixty)
  • Some internal changes — reorganize top-level functions (@aljazerzen), add a workflow to track our Rust compilation time (@max-sixty), simplify our simple prql-to-sql tests (@max-sixty)

Thanks to @ankane, prql-compiler is now available from homebrew core; brew install prql-compiler1.

1

  1.    we still need to update docs and add a release workflow for this:
  2.    <https://github.com/PRQL/prql/issues/866>
  1. ## 0.2.3 - 2022-07-24

A couple of weeks since the 0.2.2 release: we’ve squashed a few bugs, added some mid-sized features to the language, and made a bunch of internal improvements.

The 0.2.3 release includes:

  • Allow for escaping otherwise-invalid identifiers (@aljazerzen & @max-sixty)
  • Fix a bug around operator precedence (@max-sixty)
  • Add a section the book on the language bindings (@charlie-sanders)
  • Add tests for our Display representation while fixing some existing bugs. This is gradually becoming our code formatter (@arrizalamin)
  • Add a “copy to clipboard” button in the Playground (@mklopets)
  • Add lots of guidance to our CONTRIBUTING.md around our tests and process for merging (@max-sixty)
  • Add a prql! macro for parsing a prql query at compile time (@aljazerzen)
  • Add tests for prql-js (@charlie-sanders)
  • Add a from_json method for transforming json to a PRQL string (@arrizalamin)
  • Add a workflow to release prql-java to Maven (@doki23)
  • Enable running all tests from a PR by adding a pr-run-all-tests label (@max-sixty)
  • Have cargo-release to bump all crate & npm versions (@max-sixty)
  • Update prql-js to use the bundler build of prql-js (@mklopets)

As well as those contribution changes, thanks to those who’ve reported issues, such as @mklopets @huw @mm444 @ajfriend.

From here, we’re planning to continue squashing bugs (albeit more minor than those in this release), adding some features like union, while working on bigger issues such as type-inference.

We’re also going to document and modularize the compiler further. It’s important that we give more people an opportunity to contribute to the guts of PRQL, especially given the number and enthusiasm of contributions to project in general — and it’s not that easy to do so at the moment. While this is ongoing if anyone has something they’d like to work on in the more difficult parts of the compiler, let us know on GitHub or Discord, and we’d be happy to work together on it.

Thank you!

0.2.2 - 2022-07-10

We’re a couple of weeks since our 0.2.0 release. Thanks for the surge in interest and contributions! 0.2.2 has some fixes & some internal improvements:

  • We now test against SQLite & DuckDB on every commit, to ensure we’re producing correct SQL. (@aljazerzen)
  • We have the beginning of Java bindings! (@doki23)
  • Idents surrounded by backticks are passed through to SQL (@max-sixty)
  • More examples on homepage; e.g. join & window, lots of small docs improvements
  • Automated releases to homebrew (@roG0d)
  • prql-js is now a single package for Node, browsers & webpack (@charlie-sanders)
  • Parsing has some fixes, including >= and leading underscores in idents (@mklopets)
  • Ranges receive correct syntax highlighting (@max-sixty)

Thanks to Aljaž Mur Eržen @aljazerzen , George Roldugin @roldugin , Jasper McCulloch @Jaspooky , Jie Han @doki23 , Marko Klopets @mklopets , Maximilian Roos @max-sixty , Rodrigo Garcia @roG0d , Ryan Russell @ryanrussell , Steven Maude @StevenMaude , Charlie Sanders @charlie-sanders .

We’re planning to continue collecting bugs & feature requests from users, as well as working on some of the bigger features, like type-inference.

For those interesting in joining, we also have a new Contributing page.

0.2.0 - 2022-06-27

🎉 🎉 After several months of building, PRQL is ready to use! 🎉 🎉

How we got here:

At the end of January, we published a proposal of a better language for data transformation: PRQL. The reception was better than I could have hoped for — we were no. 2 on HackerNews for a day, and gained 2.5K GitHub stars over the next few days.

But man cannot live on GitHub Stars alone — we had to do the work to build it. So over the next several months, during many evenings & weekends, a growing group of us gradually built the compiler, evolved the language, and wrote some integrations.

We want to double-down on the community and its roots in open source — it’s incredible that a few of us from all over the globe have collaborated on a project without ever having met. We decided early-on that PRQL would always be open-source and would never have a commercial product (despite lots of outside interest to fund a seed round!). Because languages are so deep in the stack, and the data stack has so many players, the best chance of building a great language is to build an open language.

We still have a long way to go. While PRQL is usable, it has lots of missing features, and an incredible amount of unfulfilled potential, including a language server, cohesion with databases, and type inference. Over the coming weeks, we’d like to grow the number of intrepid users experimenting PRQL in their projects, prioritize features that will unblock them, and then start fulfilling PRQL’s potential by working through our roadmap.

The best way to experience PRQL is to try it. Check out our website and the Playground. Start using PRQL for your own projects in dbt, Jupyter notebooks and Prefect workflows.

Keep in touch with PRQL by following the project on Twitter, joining us on Discord, starring the repo.

Contribute to the project — we’re a really friendly community, whether you’re a recent SQL user or an advanced Rust programmer. We need bug reports, documentation tweaks & feature requests — just as much as we need compiler improvements written in Rust.

I especially want to give Aljaž Mur Eržen (@aljazerzen) the credit he deserves, who has contributed the majority of the difficult work of building out the compiler. Much credit also goes to Charlie Sanders (@charlie-sanders), one of PRQL’s earliest supporters and the author of pyprql, and Ryan Patterson-Cross (@rbpatt2019), who built the Jupyter integration among other Python contributions.

Other contributors who deserve a special mention include: @roG0d, @snth, @kwigley

Thank you, and we look forward to your feedback!