Step 4: Make queries with the shell

The output of turso db create in the last step shows a command to run to start an interactive shell:

turso db shell my-db

Connected to my-db at libsql://my-db-[my-github-name].turso.io

Welcome to Turso SQL shell!

Type ".quit" to exit the shell and ".help" to list all available commands.

→

See that the shell is working with a simple "hello world" SQL statement:

→  select "hello world" as message;
MESSAGE
hello world

note

The shell requires that SQL commands terminate with a semicolon. If you enter a string that does not, the shell will continue accepting lines of SQL input until a terminating semicolon is provided.

note

Turso is backed by libSQL, which is a fork of SQLite, so you must provide SQL commands in the SQLite dialect.

Create and populate a table, and view its contents by copying the following SQL statements into the shell:

→  create table users (id text, email text);

→  insert into users values ("001", "test@foo.com");

→  select * from users;
ID   EMAIL
001  test@foo.com

Run .help to see a list of shell commands. You can see the commands .tables and .schema and use them to inspect the structure of the database:

→  .tables
users

→  .schema
CREATE TABLE users (id text, email text)

.quit or CTRL-d ends the shell.

→  .quit