Change the prompt in clickhouse-client

This article explains how to change the prompt in your Clickhouse client terminal window from :) to whatever you want.

Change the prompt in clickhouse client

Want to change your ClickHouse Client prompt? Read on.

Background

If you don't like how clickhouse client displays the prompt in your terminal window, it's possible to change it by creating a single XML file. This article explains how to change the prompt to whatever you want.

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

However, you can edit the prompt to be whatever you want:

Steps

To edit the prompt, follow these steps:

1. Find where you clickhouse executable is stored, and create a file call custom-config.xml in the same directory:

   ./
   ├── clickhouse
   ├── custom-config.xml
   ...
   ├── user_scripts
   └── uuid

2. Inside custom-config.xml paste the following code:

   <?xml version="1.0" ?>
   <clickhouse>
           <prompt_by_server_display_name>
               <default>CUSTOM_PROMPT_HERE</default>
           </prompt_by_server_display_name>
   </clickhouse>

3. Replace CUSTOM_PROMPT_HERE with whatever you want your prompt to say. You must keep the prompt to a single line between the opening and closing <default> tags:

   <?xml version="1.0" ?>
   <clickhouse>
           <prompt_by_server_display_name>
               <default>local_clickhouse_client $> </default>
           </prompt_by_server_display_name>
   </clickhouse>

4. Save the custom-config.xml file.

5. Start the Clickhouse server if it isn't already running:

   ./clickhouse server

6. In a new terminal window, start the Clickhouse client with the --config-file=custom-config.xml argument:

   ./clickhouse client --config-file="custom-config.xml"

7. The Clickhouse client should open and display your custom prompt: