LalitMaganti/syntaqlite

A parser, formatter, validator, and language server for SQLite SQL, built on SQLite's own grammar and tokenizer. If SQLite accepts it, syntaqlite parses it. If SQLite rejects it, so does syntaqlite.

Note: syntaqlite is at 0.x. APIs and CLI flags may change before 1.0.

Most SQLite tools build a generic SQL parser and bolt SQLite on as a "flavor" with hand-written grammars, regex-based tokenizers, or subsets that approximate the language. That falls apart because SQLite has a deep surface area of syntax that generic parsers don't handle.

syntaqlite uses SQLite's own Lemon-generated grammar and tokenizer, compiled from C. The parser doesn't approximate SQLite; it is SQLite's grammar compiled into a reusable library.

SQLite SQL is also not one fixed language. It has 22 compile-time flags that change what syntax the parser accepts, another 12 that gate built-in functions, and the language evolves across versions. Because SQLite is embedded, you can't assume everyone is on the latest version (Android 15 ships SQLite 3.44.3, seven major versions behind latest). syntaqlite tracks all of this:

RETURNING was added in SQLite 3.35.0; Android 13 still ships SQLite 3.32.2.

We've tested against ~396K statements from SQLite's upstream test suite with ~99.7% agreement on parse acceptance. See the detailed comparison for how syntaqlite stacks up against other tools.