An open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data https://datasette.io
  • Python 83.9%
  • HTML 7.3%
  • JavaScript 6.6%
  • CSS 1.8%
  • Shell 0.2%
Find a file
Simon Willison 5bf4cf8860 Add insert row UI to table pages
Add a permission-gated Insert row button to mutable table pages and expose the metadata needed by the client-side UI, including the insert API path, table name, primary keys, editable columns, defaults, nullability, and column type information.

Reuse the existing row edit modal for inserts. Insert submissions now use the JSON API with return=true, derive the new row's tilde-encoded row path from the returned primary key values, fetch the matching table fragment, and insert the rendered row into the current table. Successful inserts and updates now show mutation status messages above the table.

Support SQLite defaults in insert forms by showing default expressions as non-editable values with Set value / Use default controls. Keep those controls aligned and stable so toggling between default and custom values does not shift the modal layout.

Refine the edit modal at the same time: send only changed fields on update, skip the update API entirely when nothing changed, clear stale mutation status for no-op saves, and simplify modal headings so insert/edit context is shown in the bold title instead of duplicated summary text.

Add tests for the insert button and metadata, including omitted integer primary keys, default values, table names, and compound primary keys.
2026-06-13 21:34:45 -07:00
.github Need is_trusted=True for the counters demo 2026-05-26 15:20:29 -07:00
datasette Add insert row UI to table pages 2026-06-13 21:34:45 -07:00
demos Fixed an unnecessary f-string 2024-02-04 10:15:21 -08:00
docs Add in-place table row edit and delete UI 2026-06-13 18:41:00 -07:00
tests Add insert row UI to table pages 2026-06-13 21:34:45 -07:00
.coveragerc Configure code coverage, refs #841, #843 2020-06-13 13:48:23 -07:00
.dockerignore Build Dockerfile with SpatiaLite 5, refs #1249 2021-03-26 21:27:40 -07:00
.git-blame-ignore-revs Ignore Black commits in git blame, refs #1716 2022-04-22 14:58:46 -07:00
.gitattributes New explicit versioning mechanism 2020-10-28 20:38:15 -07:00
.gitignore Fix filter-input and search-input zoom on iOS Safari 2026-01-28 18:41:58 -08:00
.isort.cfg Used isort to re-order my imports 2018-05-14 00:04:23 -03:00
.prettierrc .prettierrc, refs #1166 2020-12-31 13:25:44 -08:00
.readthedocs.yaml dependency-groups and uv (#2611) 2025-12-11 17:32:58 -08:00
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md Add code of conduct again 2022-03-15 08:38:42 -07:00
codecov.yml codecov should not be blocking 2020-07-02 21:29:32 -07:00
Dockerfile Upgrade Docker images to Python 3.11, closes #1853 2022-10-25 12:04:53 -07:00
Justfile Switch to ruff and fix all lint errors, refs #2630 2026-01-23 20:43:16 -08:00
LICENSE Initial commit 2017-10-22 17:39:03 -07:00
MANIFEST.in Include LICENSE in sdist (#1043) 2020-10-23 13:54:34 -07:00
package-lock.json Bump rollup from 3.29.5 to 3.30.0 (#2651) 2026-03-30 10:54:48 -07:00
package.json Bump rollup from 3.29.5 to 3.30.0 (#2651) 2026-03-30 10:54:48 -07:00
pyproject.toml Use asyncinject 0.7 results= seeding for per-request extras context 2026-06-11 06:42:08 -07:00
pytest.ini New allowed_resources_sql plugin hook and debug tools (#2505) 2025-10-08 14:27:51 -07:00
README.md Replace Glitch with Codespaces, closes #2488 2025-05-28 19:17:22 -07:00
ruff.toml Use ruff to upgrade Optional[x] to x | None 2025-10-26 10:50:29 -07:00
setup.cfg Switch to ruff and fix all lint errors, refs #2630 2026-01-23 20:43:16 -08:00
test-in-pyodide-with-shot-scraper.sh Introduce new /$DB/-/query endpoint, soft replaces /$DB?sql=... (#2363) 2024-07-15 10:33:51 -07:00

Datasette

PyPI Changelog Python 3.x Tests Documentation Status License docker: datasette discord

An open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data

Datasette is a tool for exploring and publishing data. It helps people take data of any shape or size and publish that as an interactive, explorable website and accompanying API.

Datasette is aimed at data journalists, museum curators, archivists, local governments, scientists, researchers and anyone else who has data that they wish to share with the world.

Explore a demo, watch a video about the project or try it out on GitHub Codespaces.

Want to stay up-to-date with the project? Subscribe to the Datasette newsletter for tips, tricks and news on what's new in the Datasette ecosystem.

Installation

If you are on a Mac, Homebrew is the easiest way to install Datasette:

brew install datasette

You can also install it using pip or pipx:

pip install datasette

Datasette requires Python 3.8 or higher. We also have detailed installation instructions covering other options such as Docker.

Basic usage

datasette serve path/to/database.db

This will start a web server on port 8001 - visit http://localhost:8001/ to access the web interface.

serve is the default subcommand, you can omit it if you like.

Use Chrome on OS X? You can run datasette against your browser history like so:

 datasette ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default/History --nolock

Now visiting http://localhost:8001/History/downloads will show you a web interface to browse your downloads data:

Downloads table rendered by datasette

metadata.json

If you want to include licensing and source information in the generated datasette website you can do so using a JSON file that looks something like this:

{
    "title": "Five Thirty Eight",
    "license": "CC Attribution 4.0 License",
    "license_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "source": "fivethirtyeight/data on GitHub",
    "source_url": "https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data"
}

Save this in metadata.json and run Datasette like so:

datasette serve fivethirtyeight.db -m metadata.json

The license and source information will be displayed on the index page and in the footer. They will also be included in the JSON produced by the API.

datasette publish

If you have Heroku or Google Cloud Run configured, Datasette can deploy one or more SQLite databases to the internet with a single command:

datasette publish heroku database.db

Or:

datasette publish cloudrun database.db

This will create a docker image containing both the datasette application and the specified SQLite database files. It will then deploy that image to Heroku or Cloud Run and give you a URL to access the resulting website and API.

See Publishing data in the documentation for more details.

Datasette Lite

Datasette Lite is Datasette packaged using WebAssembly so that it runs entirely in your browser, no Python web application server required. Read more about that in the Datasette Lite documentation.