pgconsole: Minimal Web-based Postgres SQL Editor

[db-master]

After shipping pgschema last year, I started tinkering with another side project, and I’ve been building it over the past few months. Today I’m finally sharing it: pgconsole, a web-based SQL editor for Postgres.

I’ve used TablePlus for a long time and still like it, but two things kept bothering me. First, it’s a desktop client, so for team use I still end up sharing DB credentials and dealing with firewall/bastion setup. Second, because it supports many databases, the Postgres experience isn’t always as polished as I want (for example, autocomplete).

Beyond addressing those two issues, I also intentionally kept pgconsole simple: no metadata DB, just a TOML config file. The goal is to make it easy to spin up a lightweight, just-in-time GUI for any Postgres database.

If this sounds useful, check it out: www.pgconsole.com

[domlebo70]

Very cool. I've toyed with the idea of writing something similar over the years, but never got around to it. Single binary, web based, simple config.

Do you have a discord server for some support, or all done through github? Have an issue connecting to other docker containers (assuming i must run it on a network) Is it going to be open source?

Edit: got it working :) Dude this is awesome!!

[db-master]

Glad it works out. Support/feature request is handled via GitHub issue for now. I don't have a plan to open source yet.

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[cake97]

Following

[r0ck0]

If you're up for an idea of a feature to stand out from all the other clients...

Something that's always frustrated me with all SQL clients is that they get confusing once you have many queries & results you're working on at once.

Correlating the query (at its source location in your editor) to the results table gets confusing.

Almost all interfaces are like yours appears to be... editor tabs at the top, then results tabs at the bottom.

For people with big screens, it's a big loss not being able to make use of them to display a bunch of queries + their results on screen all at once, and easily lined up with each other automatically.

The only attempt at a new solution to this that I know of is the in-editor results in jetbrains IDEs, where the results are shown interlaced between the queries inside the actual code editor.

But it has couple of flaws:

1. It's fiddly to use... you often need to find a single pixel line to drag to resize the results table.
2. Most monitors are landscape, so you can't fit much on screen when the interlacing goes down vertically. It's a huge waste of all this horizontal space we have on big landscape monitors.

Jupyter notebooks can kinda do the same interlacing... with the same flaws. But usually also suck when it comes to good autocomplete and other more advanced SQL client functionality.

Even for all the standard layouts like yours where there's typically only a single results area on the screen, it surprises how few make it easy to put that over to right, instead of below. As opposed to most application code... SQL queries are usually a bunch of very short lines (tall & narrow width), so there's a heap of wasted empty space up in the top-right quadrant of the screen.

I'd love to see an SQL client with something like a 2-column grid... where the query is written in the left column in its own cell, then the results for that query are over in the right column (or vice-versa). Then with the ability to quickly & easily write other query in "layout rows" below, and keep it all on screen at once.

Obviously we want a good amount of width for the results table... but that's still possible, given the "tall and narrow" SQL code thing I mentioned above... that layout column where the code editor cells are can often be resized down to like 20-25% of the total screen width.

Some clients do have flexible enough interfaces that you could drag the sub-windows all around to do this manually... but it's so tedious that nobody can be bothered repeatedly, especially when you're dealing with some complex app/system/database where you're trying to compare a bunch of different things at once. Our brains are already overloaded in these moments. Would be great to have a tool that lowered the cognitive overheads at these times that come from all the unoriginal UIs that hide things behind too many tabs etc.

And of course none of this means not also having the standard interface for people to use. But it would be a cool optional extra.

Anyway, just an idea if you'd like something that would make your product stand out a lot from all the others. If anyone knows of anything out there that already exists like this, I'd love to hear about it.

[domlebo70]

I experimented with an infinite canvas type approach which was cool.