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CLI quickstart

Learn how to create a table, add some sample data, and query the data using the CLI.

Using the Tableland CLI, developers can interact with their tables from the command line. There are some optional setup steps, including a config file and ensuring you have the proper testnet currency to execute table creates and writes.

1. Installation​

Open your terminal and globally install the Tableland CLI.

npm install -g @tableland/cli

Local development​

It's easiest to also use Local Tableland when you're first getting started. Install the @tableland/local package globally (see here for details) and then start the local nodes. This will spin up a local Tableland validator node as well as a Hardhat node, allowing you to connect to chain ID 31337 and RPC URL http://127.0.0.1 for testing purposes.

npm install -g @tableland/local

And then spin the nodes up so that you can use Tableland without needing to connect to any testnets or mainnets:

npx local-tableland

The rest of these examples will make use of the local nodes, but you can also connect to any supported EVM chain by specifying the --chain and --providerUrl flags.

2. Create a configuration file​

Specify your development environment's privateKey, chain, and providerUrl (e.g., Alchemy, Infura, etc.). This creates a configuration file at /Users/$USER/.tablelandrc.json that is automatically read by the tableland commands.

tableland init

Ideally, you should choose to ues the aliases feature. This is an option during the config step, and it allows you to write SQL statement with a locally saved alias to table name map. Thus, you can write statements with something like my_table instead of my_table_31337_2.

Note that values for the chain can be found here; the values used are those that ethers uses (e.g., Polygon Mumbai is called maticmum).

3. Create a table​

Choose to define an optional prefix, such as quickstart. If you didn’t run the init command, you can also specify the required parameters as command options (prefix, chain, and private key). The private key being used here is the one that comes with Hardhat by default, so feel free to replace it with your own on live networks.

# Create a table & save its returned `name` locally
tableland create "id int primary key, val text" --prefix my_table --chain local-tableland --privateKey 59c6995e998f97a5a0044966f0945389dc9e86dae88c7a8412f4603b6b78690d --providerUrl http://127.0.0.1:8545

Or, you can choose to pass a full CREATE TABLE statement without the prefix flag:

# Create a table & save its returned `name` locally
tableland create "CREATE TABLE (id int primary key, val text)" --prefix my_table --chain local-tableland --privateKey 59c6995e998f97a5a0044966f0945389dc9e86dae88c7a8412f4603b6b78690d --providerUrl http://127.0.0.1:8545

The table created should look something like my_table_31337_2—a prefix of my_table on chain 31337 and table ID 2.

4. Write data​

Insert, update, or delete values while still specifying the chain, private key, and provider URL in case you didn't run the init command.

tableland write "INSERT INTO my_table_31337_2 VALUES (0, 'Bobby Tables')" --prefix my_table --chain local-tableland --privateKey 59c6995e998f97a5a0044966f0945389dc9e86dae88c7a8412f4603b6b78690d --providerUrl http://127.0.0.1:8545

5. Read data​

You can read data from the table you created.

tableland read "SELECT * FROM my_table_31337_2;" --chain local-tableland

5. Open the shell​

Lastly, if you'd like to use raw SQL statements without commands, you can open the Tableland shell with the shell command. This lets you do all of the above but while passing the raw string SQL statement.

Run the command tableland shell to allow you to access these features.

tableland shell --chain local-tableland --privateKey 59c6995e998f97a5a0044966f0945389dc9e86dae88c7a8412f4603b6b78690d --providerUrl http://127.0.0.1:8545

Then, you can make queries!

Welcome to Tableland
Tableland CLI shell
Connected to local-tableland using 0x70997970C51812dc3A010C7d01b50e0d17dc79C8
tableland> create table my_table (id integer primary key, val text);
tableland> insert into my_table_table_31337_12(val) values ('Bobby Tables');
tableland> select * from my_table_table_31337_2;