Hi all,
I am looking for a local database that is easily accessible via the command line.
It can be SQL or non-SQL
Whats my use case? I want to use it kinda like a second brain. A place to save my notes, my todo lists, my book reading lists, links / articles to read later, etc.
I want it to be a good CLI citizen so that I can script its commands to create simpler abstractions, rather than writing out the full queries every time.
Maybe sqlite is what I need, but is that ideal for my use case?
Edit: removed notes, as evidently they aren’t suitable for this and aren’t like the rest.
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Unless your lists are 1000s of items long, just use text files in a folder.
Could even go fancy and use markdown.
I definitely considered this approach. The only problem is it is difficult to represent linking items to each other. For example, dependent tasks or sub tasks.
Using a database for notes is like going 2km in a plane.
You can use any relational database for this though but why would you subject yourself to this?
I think you’re right about notes, but what about the other use cases?
I wouldn’t recommend a DB for note taking purpose. You can use Markdown with vim.
Is their any DB that doesn’t have a CLI?
Joplin can do all that and has: Plugin support for nearly anything you want Runs on sqlite if you want to access the data direct Is 100% open source.
Also has (or had) a cli interface.
I didn’t know this about Joplin, that’s pretty neat.
Counter-proposal: Perhaps use Obsidian instead?
Joplin is a note taking app that stores its data in an sqlite database (easy to query but not a good idea to write to it) but there is also a command line version and both versions support access via a data API.
No command line interface, but if you’re focus is a single solution with a consistent interface for lists, to-dos, etc., AppFlowy might be what you are looking for.
I’m a huge fan of NocoDB, including their kanban views, group by options, and forms. You could use the GUI to create the tables and relations and then use the REST API to quickly update from the command line. It can use any database for its storage, so you could still create scripts or read the data for specific needs.
Hey!
I’ve wanted something very similar—specifically, a plain-text database. I recently came across GNU recutils, which I haven’t had time to play around with yet, but which seems like it fits the bill (at least for me). There’s a couple YouTube videos on it—I encourage you to check it out!
They aren’t exactly CLI but I really like obsidian for taking notes. It’s not open source though. Logseq is good too and is OSS. Both use markdown for formatting so if you are familiar with writing pages on GitHub you’ll have no trouble. Even if not markdown is super easy to learn. That and all of your data stays local and in open formats. I edit my stuff in a terminal anyway.
Just look up obsidian OSINT on YouTube you’ll find some good stuff on how to use it.
Another thought is just use markdown files and a directory structure in a private git repo. You’d be able to interact with it locally entirely in the terminal with vim etc and have the option of going online and searching or organizing etc. You could probably even use a cli browser for that part if you wanted.
I think you would be better off using something like org-roam. It’s all text so script can still be used and it can be searched fast with ripgrep. Also org mode has loads of features that a homegrown system will never be able to catch up with
Duckdb has pretty good cli support https://duckdb.org/docs/api/cli/overview.html#non-interactive-usage
Are you an emacs user?
Try org-roam. It’s a similar system to obsidian, but fully open source. You have all the note taking techniques of org-mode, and all the scripting power of emacs.
sqlite is exactly what you want. You can even load a CSV file directly into a new table. Everything is a string, it’s extremely fast and ubiquitous on moderns OS’s.
Is there a reason you’re not looking at tools explicitly built for this like orgmode, obsidian, task-warrior, etc? There’s a plethora of these tools and my experience with this is you really don’t want to over-engineer your productivity suite.
That said, if you go the SQL route, sqlite is the way to go. Other SQL databases must be run as a daemon whereas sqlite operates on a local file directly.
However any SQL database isnt going to have the CLI youre asking for. Its interface is… SQL, so you’re scripts are going to have a bunch of SQL code embedded that isnt easily reusable. A non-sql database will probably be better. I’m not familiar with them but I think there’s some that store their data as text files in a folder which is organized a certain way. But that starts looking like the tools I mentioned before.
Task warrior was close to what I wanted. I forgot what it lacked when I tried it. I think it was dependent tasks or sub tasks? If not that, then a tag system with flexible querying. I want querying by tag, due date, and other attributes to be possible.
I think orgmode may be what I want, but the learning curve was discouraging. I was also discouraged about the possibility for myself to build extensions for it, for example to use on android. That would be easier with sql.
Obsidian is gui from my understanding, so it wouldn’t fit what I’m looking for. I want something I can integrate with my scripts and other unix tools.
Yeah I only suggested obsidian because its so popular and is completely out-of-the-box.
If you want everything exactly as you want it you’ll need to spend time coding it all yourself. Otherwise you’re shopping around for different tools for specific things. Some editor plugin for notes. Another for tasks. Another for reminders etc.
My issue with task warrior was its syncing service
taskd. It required that you generate a self signed ssl certificate. You couldn’t host it behind caddy. But all the issues listed I’m pretty sure it covers. Its extremely robust.
