Neovim, Helix, and other editors

syntaqlite ships a language server that works with any editor that supports LSP. This tutorial gets you from zero to working diagnostics and formatting.

1. Install syntaqlite

If you haven't already:

curl -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LalitMaganti/syntaqlite/main/tools/syntaqlite | python3 - install

mise use github:LalitMaganti/syntaqlite

pip install syntaqlite

brew install LalitMaganti/tap/syntaqlite

cargo install syntaqlite-cli

Verify it runs:

syntaqlite fmt -e "select 1"

2. Configure your editor

Neovim

Add this to your Neovim config (requires nvim-lspconfig):

vim.lsp.config('syntaqlite', {
  cmd = { 'syntaqlite', 'lsp' },
  filetypes = { 'sql' },
  root_markers = { 'syntaqlite.toml', '.git' },
})
vim.lsp.enable('syntaqlite')

Open a .sql file. You should see syntax errors underlined, and formatting works via your usual LSP format keybinding.

Helix

Add to ~/.config/helix/languages.toml:

[[language]]
name = "sql"
language-servers = ["syntaqlite"]

[language-server.syntaqlite]
command = "syntaqlite"
args = ["lsp"]

Restart Helix and open a .sql file. Diagnostics appear inline and :format formats the buffer.

Other LSP clients

The pattern is the same for any editor: set the server command to syntaqlite lsp and associate it with SQL files. The server communicates over stdin/stdout using JSON-RPC.

3. Try it out

Create a file called test.sql:

SELEC id, name FROM users;

Open it in your editor. You should see a syntax error diagnostic on SELEC. Fix it to SELECT and the error disappears.

4. Add schema validation

Without a schema, syntaqlite catches syntax errors and function misspellings. To also catch unknown tables and columns, add a syntaqlite.toml to your project root:

schema = ["schema.sql"]

Then create schema.sql with your table definitions:

CREATE TABLE users (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, name TEXT, email TEXT);

Restart the language server (or reopen the editor). Now a query like SELECT nme FROM users will show a warning with a "did you mean 'name'?" suggestion.

See project setup for the full configuration reference.