tabularis-clickhouse-plugin

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

This plugin enables Tabularis to connect to any ClickHouse instance and provides table and view browsing, inline CRUD, index management, and SQL query execution through a JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio interface.

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Table of Contents

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

Features

• Connection — Connect to any ClickHouse instance via host/port with optional authentication and TLS.
• Database & Table Browsing — List databases (schemas), tables, and their columns with native ClickHouse types.
• View Support — List views, retrieve their definitions and column metadata.
• Index Inspection — List data-skipping indexes with name, type, columns, and granularity.
• Query Execution — Run arbitrary SQL queries with pagination support.
• Inline Editing — Insert, update, and delete rows directly from the Tabularis data grid.
• DDL Generation — Generates CREATE TABLE, ALTER TABLE ADD/MODIFY/RENAME COLUMN, and ADD INDEX statements.
• Cross-platform — Pre-built binaries for Linux (x86_64, aarch64), macOS (x86_64, aarch64), and Windows (x86_64).

Supported ClickHouse Data Types

Category	Types
Integer	Int8, Int16, Int32, Int64, Int128, Int256, UInt8, UInt16, UInt32, UInt64, UInt128, UInt256
Floating point	Float32, Float64, Decimal
String	String, FixedString
Date/Time	Date, Date32, DateTime, DateTime64
Other	Boolean, UUID, IPv4, IPv6, Array, Tuple, Map, Nullable, LowCardinality, Enum8, Enum16

Installation

Automatic (via Tabularis)

If your version of Tabularis supports plugin management, the ClickHouse 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-clickhouse-plugin (or tabularis-clickhouse-plugin.exe on Windows) and manifest.json into the Tabularis plugins directory:

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

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. The plugin connects to ClickHouse via its HTTP interface and writes responses to stdout.

Connection state is pooled per URL — the same Client instance is reused for all operations within a session.

Query Syntax

The execute_query method accepts standard ClickHouse SQL:

-- Select rows
SELECT * FROM system.tables WHERE database = 'default'

-- Aggregation
SELECT database, count() AS table_count
FROM system.tables
GROUP BY database
ORDER BY table_count DESC

-- DDL
CREATE TABLE my_db.events
(
    id       UInt64,
    event    String,
    ts       DateTime DEFAULT now()
)
ENGINE = MergeTree
ORDER BY (ts, id)

-- Add an index
ALTER TABLE my_db.events ADD INDEX idx_event (event) TYPE minmax GRANULARITY 1

Supported Operations

Method	Description
test_connection	Ping the ClickHouse server
get_databases	List all databases
get_schemas	List all databases (alias for get_databases)
get_tables	List tables in the given database
get_columns	Return column names and types for a table or view
get_foreign_keys	Returns [] (ClickHouse has no FK constraints)
get_indexes	List data-skipping indexes for a table
get_views	List views in the given database
get_view_definition	Return the CREATE VIEW statement for a view
get_view_columns	Return column metadata for a view
get_routines / get_routine_parameters	Returns [] (no stored routines in ClickHouse)
execute_query	Run a SQL query with optional pagination
insert_record	Insert a new row
update_record	Update a single column value by primary key
delete_record	Delete a row by primary key
get_schema_snapshot	Full schema dump (all tables + columns)
get_all_columns_batch	Column metadata for all tables in a database
get_all_foreign_keys_batch	Returns {}
get_create_table_sql	Fetches the CREATE TABLE statement from SHOW CREATE TABLE
get_add_column_sql	Generates ALTER TABLE ... ADD COLUMN ...
get_alter_column_sql	Generates ALTER TABLE ... RENAME/MODIFY COLUMN ...
get_create_index_sql	Generates ALTER TABLE ... ADD INDEX ... TYPE minmax
get_create_foreign_key_sql	Returns a not-supported note
drop_index	Drops a data-skipping index
drop_foreign_key	Returns a not-supported error

Building from Source

Prerequisites

• Rust (edition 2021)
• A running ClickHouse instance (for integration tests)

Build

cargo build --release

The binary will be located at target/release/tabularis-clickhouse-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

A simulated Tabularis integration test is included (spawns the plugin and sends JSON-RPC requests via stdio):

cargo run --bin test_plugin

Manual JSON-RPC test via shell

echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"test_connection","params":{"params":{"host":"localhost","port":8123,"database":"default","username":"default","password":"","ssl":false}},"id":1}' \
  | ./target/release/tabularis-clickhouse-plugin

Tech Stack

• Language: Rust (edition 2021)
• Database driver: clickhouse v0.13 (async HTTP client)
• Serialization: serde + serde_json
• Async runtime: tokio
• Protocol: JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio

Changelog

License

Apache License 2.0