The native terminal client for NodeDB. Syntax highlighting, tab completion, multiple output formats, and a full TUI — built in Rust.

ndb connects via NodeDB's binary MessagePack protocol for lower latency and richer type support than pgwire. It works anywhere NodeDB runs.

cargo install nodedb-cli

Pre-built binaries for Linux (x64, arm64), macOS (x64, arm64), and Windows (x64) are available on the releases page.

# Connect to localhost:6433 (default)
ndb

# Specify host and port
ndb -h db.example.com -p 6433

# With authentication
ndb -u admin -w                    # prompt for password

# Execute a query and exit
ndb -e "SELECT * FROM users LIMIT 10"

# Execute from file
ndb -f queries.sql

# Pipe input
echo "SELECT 1" | ndb

CLI flags always take highest precedence.

• Syntax highlighting -- Keywords, strings, numbers, and comments are color-coded
• Tab completion -- SQL keywords, collection names, and column names (context-aware after FROM)
• History search -- Ctrl+R for reverse search through command history
• Persistent history -- Commands saved across sessions
• Multi-line editing -- Write complex queries naturally
• External editor -- \e opens your $VISUAL / $EDITOR for editing the current query

# Table (default)
ndb -e "SELECT * FROM users"

# JSON (NDJSON)
ndb --format json -e "SELECT * FROM users"

# CSV
ndb --format csv -e "SELECT * FROM users" -o users.csv

# Toggle expanded display interactively
\x
SELECT * FROM users;

~/.config/nodedb/config.toml:

[connection]
host = "localhost"
port = 6433

[display]
format = "table"      # table, json, csv
expanded = false

git clone https://github.com/NodeDB-Lab/nodedb-cli.git
cd nodedb-cli
cargo build --release

The binary is at target/release/ndb.

For local development against the NodeDB workspace, create .cargo/config.toml:

[patch.crates-io]
nodedb-client = { path = "../nodedb/nodedb-client" }
nodedb-types = { path = "../nodedb/nodedb-types" }

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE for details.