My first vim plugin!

Have you ever had the necessity to check a query while you are writing a python wrapper? If so, this post is for you.

Many times I have had the necessity of checking a query while I’m writing , debugging or testing a function. That’s why I wrote my first vim (well, actually a nvim) plugin called dbee.nvim.

My use case

I have a virtual environment with SQLAlchemy and others Python dependencies, and then I want to check a query from my project. So, I have to open DBeaver, or another SQL client, copy-paste the query there and see the result. This process can be very annoying.

Why do I have to open an external program when I already have all that I need in my virtual environment?

The idea is to define an engine using SQLAlchemy with a connection string, and then through pandas fetch the data using that engine. Pretty simple, isn’t it?

Installation

If you want to use it, add the following in your vimrc:

Plug 'asdf0x2199/dbee.nvim'

I’m using the following maps:

vnoremap <C-q> :DBeeQuery<cr>
vnoremap <C-c><C-c> :DBeeSetConnection<cr><cr>

Example

Let’s suppose that we are writing the following python function:

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def get_titles():
    cn_str = "sqlite:////home/mgreco/gitlab/asdf0x2199/dbee.nvim/tests/chinook.db"
    engine = sa.create_engine(cn_str)
    conn = engine.connect()
    qry = """
          SELECT title
          FROM albums;
          """
    out = pd.read_sql(qry, conn)
    return out

We can setup our connection by going to the line where cn_str is and select the content inside the quotes and executing :'<,'>DBeeSetConnection. This will print out the following message: Configurated sqlite:////home/mgreco/gitlab/asdf0x2199/dbee.nvim/tests/chinook.db, after that we are ready to make queries to that database.

Now, we are ready to select the query inside the quotes and call to :'<,'>DBeeQuery. This should open a new temporary buffer with the connection string, the selected query and the output fetched from it. You can easily close the buffer by pressing Q.

I hope you will find this useful too. You can check it out here , your feedback is welcome, feel free to open an issue ;-)