Getting started

Basic usage

datasette serve path/to/database.db

This will start a web server on port 8001 - visit http://localhost:8001/ to access the web interface.

serve is the default subcommand, you can omit it if you like.

Use Chrome on OS X? You can run datasette against your browser history like so:

datasette ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default/History

Now visiting http://localhost:8001/History/downloads will show you a web interface to browse your downloads data:

Downloads table rendered by datasette

http://localhost:8001/History/downloads.json will return that data as JSON:

{
    "database": "History",
    "columns": [
        "id",
        "current_path",
        "target_path",
        "start_time",
        "received_bytes",
        "total_bytes",
        ...
    ],
    "table_rows_count": 576,
    "rows": [
        [
            1,
            "/Users/simonw/Downloads/DropboxInstaller.dmg",
            "/Users/simonw/Downloads/DropboxInstaller.dmg",
            13097290269022132,
            626688,
            0,
            ...
        ]
    ]
}

http://localhost:8001/History/downloads.json?_shape=objects will return that data as JSON in a more convenient but less efficient format:

{
    ...
    "rows": [
        {
            "start_time": 13097290269022132,
            "interrupt_reason": 0,
            "hash": "",
            "id": 1,
            "site_url": "",
            "referrer": "https://www.dropbox.com/downloading?src=index",
            ...
        }
    ]
}

datasette serve options

$ datasette serve --help

Usage: datasette serve [OPTIONS] [FILES]...

  Serve up specified SQLite database files with a web UI

Options:
  -h, --host TEXT           host for server, defaults to 127.0.0.1
  -p, --port INTEGER        port for server, defaults to 8001
  --debug                   Enable debug mode - useful for development
  --reload                  Automatically reload if database or code change detected -
                            useful for development
  --cors                    Enable CORS by serving Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
  --load-extension PATH     Path to a SQLite extension to load
  --inspect-file TEXT       Path to JSON file created using "datasette inspect"
  -m, --metadata FILENAME   Path to JSON file containing license/source metadata
  --template-dir DIRECTORY  Path to directory containing custom templates
  --plugins-dir DIRECTORY   Path to directory containing custom plugins
  --static STATIC MOUNT     mountpoint:path-to-directory for serving static files
  --config CONFIG           Set config option using configname:value
                            datasette.readthedocs.io/en/latest/config.html
  --version-note TEXT       Additional note to show on /-/versions
  --help-config             Show available config options
  --help                    Show this message and exit.