Kuneiform Introduction

Kuneiform is a language for defining databases on Kwil. Although we typically refer to an entire schema file as a "Kuneiform" file, schema files are technically made of two distinct languages:

• Kuneiform (DDL): The Kuneiform language is specifically a Data Defintion Language (DDL) for Kwil databases. DDL's typically manage structuring metadata; a common example is the CREATE TABLE ... statement in typical SQL databases. Kuneiform is a more "modern" version of this, featuring a C-like syntax, as well as new features.

• SQL (DML): In Kwil, regular SQL is used as the Data Manipulation Language (DML). SQL is written within a Kuneiform file to store, update, or retrieve data. While Kwil uses it's own SQL standard for security purposes, it is most similar to the SQL-92 standard. For most users, it can be thought of as a slightly restrictive version of SQLite's syntax.

tip

You can write, compile, and deploy Kuneiform, as well as view sample Kuneiform files, online at https://ide.kwil.com.

social_network.kf

database social_network;

// table for storing users
// each wallet can have a user
table users {
    id int primary notnull,
    username text notnull unique minlen(5) maxlen(32),
    age int notnull max(150),
    address text notnull unique // wallet address
}

// a public action for creating a user
// it will store the user's wallet address
action create_user ($id, $username, $age) public {
    INSERT INTO users
    VALUES ($id, $username, $age, @caller);
}

// a public action for updating a user's own mutable data
action update_user ($username, $age) public {
    UPDATE users
    SET username=$username, age=$age
    WHERE address=@caller;
}

Kuneiform Video

Check out the Kuneiform Tutorial below for a helpful overview of the language and how to deploy your database through the IDE.

Read More

To learn more about Kuneiform and its features, see the section on DDL, which outlines the language features.

To learn more on the supported SQL syntax, read the DML page, or check out the full syntax tree.