tabularis-duckdb-plugin

A DuckDB plugin for Tabularis, the lightweight database management tool.

This plugin enables Tabularis to work with DuckDB databases — both file-based and in-memory — providing full schema inspection, CRUD operations, view management, and DDL generation through a JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio interface.

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Table of Contents

• Features
• Supported DuckDB Data Types
• Installation
  • Automatic (via Tabularis)
  • Manual Installation
• How It Works
• Supported Operations
• Building from Source
• Development
• Changelog
• License

Features

• File-based & In-memory databases — Open .duckdb files or work with ephemeral in-memory databases.
• Schema Inspection — Browse tables, columns, primary keys, foreign keys, and indexes.
• View Management — Create, alter, drop, and inspect views with full metadata.
• SQL Execution — Run any SQL query with automatic pagination for SELECT statements.
• Inline Editing — Insert, update, and delete records directly from the Tabularis data grid.
• DDL Generation — Generate CREATE TABLE, ALTER TABLE, CREATE INDEX, and FOREIGN KEY statements.
• Schema Snapshot — Fetch full schema metadata (tables, columns, foreign keys) in a single call.
• BLOB Support — Handle binary data with base64 encoding and file reference wire formats.
• Complex Types — Full support for DuckDB-specific types: LIST, MAP, STRUCT, UNION, ENUM, and more.
• Bundled DuckDB — Statically embeds DuckDB; no external dependencies required at runtime.
• Cross-platform — Pre-built binaries for Linux (x86_64, aarch64), macOS (x86_64, aarch64), and Windows (x86_64).

Supported DuckDB Data Types

Category	Types
Numeric	TINYINT, SMALLINT, INTEGER, BIGINT, HUGEINT, UTINYINT, USMALLINT, UINTEGER, UBIGINT, UHUGEINT, FLOAT, DOUBLE, DECIMAL
String	VARCHAR, TEXT, UUID, ENUM
Date/Time	DATE, TIME, TIMESTAMP, TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE, TIMESTAMP_NS, TIMESTAMP_MS, TIMESTAMP_S, TIME WITH TIME ZONE, INTERVAL
Binary	BLOB
JSON	JSON
Composite	LIST, MAP, STRUCT, UNION
Other	BOOLEAN, BIT

Installation

Automatic (via Tabularis)

If your version of Tabularis supports plugin management, the DuckDB plugin can be installed directly from the application.

Manual Installation

1. Download the latest release for your platform from the Releases page.
2. Extract the archive.
3. Copy tabularis-duckdb-plugin (or tabularis-duckdb-plugin.exe on Windows) and manifest.json into the Tabularis plugins directory:

OS	Plugins Directory
Linux	~/.local/share/tabularis/plugins/duckdb/
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/com.debba.tabularis/plugins/duckdb/
Windows	%APPDATA%\com.debba.tabularis\plugins\duckdb\

4. Restart Tabularis.

How It Works

The plugin is a standalone Rust binary that communicates with Tabularis through JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio:

1. Tabularis spawns the plugin as a child process.
2. Requests are sent as newline-delimited JSON-RPC messages to the plugin's stdin.
3. Responses are written to stdout in the same format.

This architecture keeps the plugin fully isolated — no shared memory, no network ports, no external dependencies.

Supported Operations

Method	Description
test_connection	Verify database connectivity
get_databases	List databases
get_schemas	List schemas
get_tables	List tables in a schema
get_columns	Get column metadata for a table
get_foreign_keys	Get foreign key constraints
get_indexes	Get indexes for a table
get_views	List all views
get_view_definition	Get SQL definition of a view
get_view_columns	Get columns for a view
create_view	Create a new view
alter_view	Modify an existing view
drop_view	Drop a view
execute_query	Execute SQL with pagination support
insert_record	Insert a new row
update_record	Update a cell by primary key
delete_record	Delete a row by primary key
get_schema_snapshot	Full schema dump in one call
get_all_columns_batch	All columns for all tables
get_all_foreign_keys_batch	All foreign keys for all tables
get_create_table_sql	Generate CREATE TABLE DDL
get_add_column_sql	Generate ADD COLUMN DDL
get_alter_column_sql	Generate ALTER COLUMN DDL
get_create_index_sql	Generate CREATE INDEX DDL
get_create_foreign_key_sql	Generate FOREIGN KEY DDL
drop_index	Drop an index
drop_foreign_key	Drop a foreign key constraint

Building from Source

Prerequisites

• Rust (edition 2021)

Build

cargo build --release

The binary will be located at target/release/tabularis-duckdb-plugin.

Install Locally

A convenience script is provided to build and copy the plugin to the Tabularis plugins directory:

./sync.sh

Development

Testing the Plugin

Two development binaries are included for testing:

Direct DuckDB test:

cargo run --bin test

Simulated Tabularis integration test (spawns the plugin and sends JSON-RPC requests via stdio):

cargo run --bin test_plugin

Tech Stack

• Language: Rust (edition 2021)
• Database: DuckDB v1.1.1 (bundled/statically linked)
• Serialization: serde + serde_json
• Protocol: JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio

Changelog

License

Apache License 2.0