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    Change The Prompt In Clickhouse Client

    Change the prompt in clickhouse-client

    This article explains how to change the prompt in your Clickhouse client and clickhouse-local terminal window from :) to a prefix followed by :)

    If you don't like how clickhouse client and clickhouse-local display the prompt in your terminal window, it is possible to change it to add a prefix. This article explains how to change the prompt to whatever you want.

    The default prompt is your local computer name followed by :) :

    The following are variables that you can use in a prompt: {user}, {host}

    There are several ways to update the prompt and we'll go through them each.

    --prompt flag​

    The first way to change the flag is using the --prompt:

    clickhouse --prompt 👉

    This will add the finger emoji before the smiley face:

    Config file - top level​

    Alternatively, you can provide a prompt prefix in a config.xml file:

    <config>
        <prompt>👉 </prompt>
    </config>
    clickhouse

    We can use a config file with any name we like and pass it in using the -C flag:

    <config>
        <prompt>🎄 </prompt>
    </config>
    clickhouse -C christmas.xml

    Prefer your config files to be in YAML? That works too:

    prompt: 🟡
    clickhouse -C christmas.yaml

    Config file - connections_credentials​

    Alternatively, you can specify a prompt per connection credentials. This only makes sense when using clickhouse-client.

    <config>
        <connections_credentials>
            <connection>
                <name>prod</name>
                <hostname>127.0.0.1</hostname>
                <port>9000</port>
                <secure>0</secure>
                <user>default</user>
                <prompt>\e[31m[PRODUCTION]\e[0m {user}@prod</prompt>
            </connection>
            <connection>
                <name>dev</name>
                <hostname>127.0.0.1</hostname>
                <port>9000</port>
                <secure>0</secure>
                <user>default</user>
                <prompt>\e[32m[DEVELOPMENT]\e[0m {user}@dev</prompt>
            </connection>
        </connections_credentials>
    </config>

    We can then try to connect with the dev connection:

    clickhouse client -C connections.xml --connection dev

    Or the prod one:

    clickhouse client -C connections.xml --connection prod

    And here's a YAML version:

    connections_credentials:
      connection:
        - name: prod
          hostname: 127.0.0.1
          port: 9000
          secure: 0
          user: default
          prompt: "\e[35m[PRODUCTION]\e[0m {user}@{host}"
        - name: dev
          hostname: 127.0.0.1
          port: 9000
          secure: 0
          user: default
          prompt: "\e[34m[DEVELOPMENT]\e[0m {user}@{host}"

    With the dev connnection:

    clickhouse client -C connections.yaml --connection dev

    And now prod:

    clickhouse client -C connections.yaml --connection prod

    · 2 min read