SELECT

In Polars SQL, the SELECT statement is used to retrieve data from a table into a DataFrame. The basic syntax of a SELECT statement in Polars SQL is as follows:

sql

SELECT column1, column2, ...
FROM table_name;

Here, column1, column2, etc. are the columns that you want to select from the table. You can also use the wildcard * to select all columns. table_name is the name of the table or that you want to retrieve data from. In the sections below we will cover some of the more common SELECT variants

{{code_block('user-guide/sql/sql_select','df',['SQLregister','SQLexecute'])}}

python

--8<-- "python/user-guide/sql/sql_select.py:setup"
--8<-- "python/user-guide/sql/sql_select.py:df"

GROUP BY

The GROUP BY statement is used to group rows in a table by one or more columns and compute aggregate functions on each group.

{{code_block('user-guide/sql/sql_select','group_by',['SQLexecute'])}}

python

--8<-- "python/user-guide/sql/sql_select.py:group_by"

ORDER BY

The ORDER BY statement is used to sort the result set of a query by one or more columns in ascending or descending order.

{{code_block('user-guide/sql/sql_select','orderby',['SQLexecute'])}}

python

--8<-- "python/user-guide/sql/sql_select.py:orderby"

JOIN

{{code_block('user-guide/sql/sql_select','join',['SQLregister_many','SQLexecute'])}}

python

--8<-- "python/user-guide/sql/sql_select.py:join"

Functions

Polars provides a wide range of SQL functions, including:

Mathematical functions: ABS, EXP, LOG, ASIN, ACOS, ATAN, etc.
String functions: LOWER, UPPER, LTRIM, RTRIM, STARTS_WITH,ENDS_WITH.
Aggregation functions: SUM, AVG, MIN, MAX, COUNT, STDDEV, FIRST etc.
Array functions: EXPLODE, UNNEST,ARRAY_SUM,ARRAY_REVERSE, etc.

For a full list of supported functions go the API documentation. The example below demonstrates how to use a function in a query

{{code_block('user-guide/sql/sql_select','functions',['SQLquery'])}}

python

--8<-- "python/user-guide/sql/sql_select.py:functions"

Table Functions

In the examples earlier we first generated a DataFrame which we registered in the SQLContext. Polars also support directly reading from CSV, Parquet, JSON and IPC in your SQL query using table functions read_xxx.

{{code_block('user-guide/sql/sql_select','tablefunctions',['SQLexecute'])}}

python

--8<-- "python/user-guide/sql/sql_select.py:tablefunctions"