The DuckDB driver conforms to the built-in database/sql interface.

go get github.com/marcboeker/go-duckdb

go-duckdb uses CGO to make calls to DuckDB. You must build your binaries with CGO_ENABLED=1.

go-duckdb hooks into the database/sql interface provided by the Go stdlib. To open a connection, simply specify the driver type as duckdb.

db, err := sql.Open("duckdb", "")
if err != nil {
    ...
}
defer db.Close()

This creates an in-memory instance of DuckDB. To open a persistent database, you need to specify a filepath to the database file. If the file does not exist, then DuckDB creates it.

db, err := sql.Open("duckdb", "/path/to/foo.db")
if err != nil {
	...
}
defer db.Close()

If you want to set specific config options for DuckDB, you can add them as query style parameters in the form of name=value pairs to the DSN.

db, err := sql.Open("duckdb", "/path/to/foo.db?access_mode=read_only&threads=4")
if err != nil {
    ...
}
defer db.Close()

Alternatively, you can use sql.OpenDB. That way, you can perform initialization steps in a callback function before opening the database. Here's an example that installs and loads the JSON extension when opening a database with sql.OpenDB(connector).

connector, err := duckdb.NewConnector("/path/to/foo.db?access_mode=read_only&threads=4", func(execer driver.ExecerContext) error {
    bootQueries := []string{
        "INSTALL 'json'",
        "LOAD 'json'",
    }

    for _, query := range bootQueries {
        _, err = execer.ExecContext(context.Background(), query, nil)
        if err != nil {
            ...
        }
    }
    return nil
})
if err != nil {
    ...
}

db := sql.OpenDB(connector)
defer db.Close()

Please refer to the database/sql documentation for further usage instructions.

DuckDB lives in-process. Therefore, all its memory lives in the driver. All allocations live in the host process, which is the Go application. Especially for long-running applications, it is crucial to call the corresponding Close-functions as specified in database/sql. The following is a list of examples.

db, err := sql.Open("duckdb", "")
defer db.Close()

conn, err := db.Conn(context.Background())
defer conn.Close()

rows, err := conn.QueryContext(context.Background(), "SELECT 42")
// alternatively, rows.Next() has to return false
rows.Close()

appender, err := NewAppenderFromConn(conn, "", "test")
defer appender.Close()

// if not passed to sql.OpenDB
connector, err := NewConnector("", nil)
defer connector.Close()

If you want to use the DuckDB Appender API, you can obtain a new Appender by passing a DuckDB connection to NewAppenderFromConn().

connector, err := duckdb.NewConnector("test.db", nil)
if err != nil {
	...
}
defer connector.Close()

conn, err := connector.Connect(context.Background())
if err != nil {
	...
}
defer conn.Close()

// obtain an appender from the connection
// NOTE: the table 'test_tbl' must exist in test.db
appender, err := NewAppenderFromConn(conn, "", "test_tbl")
if err != nil {
	...
}
defer appender.Close()

err = appender.AppendRow(...)
if err != nil {
	...
}

If you want to use the DuckDB Arrow Interface, you can obtain a new Arrow by passing a DuckDB connection to NewArrowFromConn().

connector, err := duckdb.NewConnector("", nil)
if err != nil {
	...
}
defer connector.Close()

conn, err := connector.Connect(context.Background())
if err != nil {
	...
}
defer conn.Close()

// obtain the Arrow from the connection
arrow, err := duckdb.NewArrowFromConn(conn)
if err != nil w
	...
}

rdr, err := arrow.QueryContext(context.Background(), "SELECT * FROM generate_series(1, 10)")
if err != nil {
	...
}
defer rdr.Release()

for rdr.Next() {
  // process records
}

If you want to vendor a module containing go-duckdb, please use modvendor to include the missing header files and libraries. See issue #174 for more details.

1. go install github.com/goware/modvendor@latest
2. go mod vendor
3. modvendor -copy="**/*.a **/*.h" -v

Now you can build your module as usual.

By default, go-duckdb statically links DuckDB into your binary. Statically linking DuckDB adds around 30 MB to your binary size. On Linux (Intel) and macOS (Intel and ARM), go-duckdb bundles pre-compiled static libraries for fast builds.

Alternatively, you can dynamically link DuckDB by passing -tags=duckdb_use_lib to go build. You must have a copy of libduckdb available on your system (.so on Linux or .dylib on macOS), which you can download from the DuckDB releases page. For example:

# On Linux
CGO_ENABLED=1 CGO_LDFLAGS="-L/path/to/libs" go build -tags=duckdb_use_lib main.go
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/libs ./main

# On macOS
CGO_ENABLED=1 CGO_LDFLAGS="-L/path/to/libs" go build -tags=duckdb_use_lib main.go
DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/libs ./main

TIMESTAMP vs. TIMESTAMP_TZ

In the C API, DuckDB stores both TIMESTAMP and TIMESTAMP_TZ as duckdb_timestamp, which holds the number of microseconds elapsed since January 1, 1970 UTC (i.e., an instant without offset information). When passing a time.Time to go-duckdb, go-duckdb transforms it to an instant with UnixMicro(), even when using TIMESTAMP_TZ. Later, scanning either type of value returns an instant, as SQL types do not model time zone information for individual values.