--- title: Introducing sqlfmt: an SQL gofmt-style formatter | daily.dev description: sqlfmt is a new opinionated SQL formatter inspired by gofmt, implementing the 'river alignment' style from The Art of PostgreSQL. It right-pads all clause... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/introducing-sqlfmt-an-sql-gofmt-style-formatter-fmhcxx1lj twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Introducing sqlfmt: an SQL gofmt-style formatter | daily.dev og:description: sqlfmt is a new opinionated SQL formatter inspired by gofmt, implementing the 'river alignment' style from The Art of PostgreSQL. It right-pads all clause... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/introducing-sqlfmt-an-sql-gofmt-style-formatter-fmhcxx1lj og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/FmhCxx1LJ.png og:image:alt: Introducing sqlfmt: an SQL gofmt-style formatter og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Introducing sqlfmt: an SQL gofmt-style formatter **[Planet PostgreSQL](https://daily.dev/sources/planet-postgresql)** · 5 min read · 10 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary sqlfmt is a new opinionated SQL formatter inspired by gofmt, implementing the 'river alignment' style from The Art of PostgreSQL. It right-pads all clause keywords (select, from, where, group by, etc.) to the same column at each nesting level, creating a vertical river with expressions flowing to the right. The tool uses a tokenizer rather than an AST for robustness and comment preservation. It ships with a CLI mirroring gofmt's interface (-w, -l, -d flags), editor plugins for Emacs and Vim/Neovim, and a WebAssembly-powered web formatter (~130 KB compressed). Install via `go install github.com/dimitri/sqlfmt/cmd/sqlfmt@latest`. The style enforces lowercase keywords, trailing commas, and and/or at line starts. A correctness oracle using pganalyze/pg_query_go verifies formatting never changes query semantics. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is sqlfmt and how does it format SQL queries? sqlfmt is a gofmt-style SQL formatter written in Go that applies a single opinionated style with no configuration options. Its defining feature is river alignment, where clause keywords like select, from, where, group by, and having are right-padded to the same column so they form a vertical river down the page. It is installed via go install and mirrors gofmt's CLI flags (-w, -l, -d). _Developers standardizing SQL style across a team can track new formatter releases like this on daily.dev._ ### Why do SQL formatters like sqlfmt use a tokenizer instead of parsing an AST? sqlfmt uses a token-stream approach rather than an AST because PostgreSQL's own parser discards comments, requiring a separate comment-recovery pass anyway if an AST were used, and because a tokenizer degrades gracefully on partial or invalid SQL snippets while a grammar-based parser fails hard. Other production formatters like pg_format, sqlfluff, and prettier-plugin-sql follow the same token-stream design. _Anyone weighing formatter architecture choices can follow tooling design tradeoffs like these on daily.dev._ ### How does sqlfmt verify that formatting SQL doesn't change its meaning? sqlfmt uses pganalyze/pg_query_go, which wraps the real PostgreSQL C parser, as a correctness oracle during testing. It checks that fingerprint(input) equals fingerprint(format.Format(input)), confirming that reformatting never silently alters what the query means. The test suite also runs a round-trip corpus test against real hand-formatted queries from a published book. _Teams adopting automated SQL formatting can watch for verification techniques like this on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [pgfmt 2.1: in-place formatting and pg\_dump-compatible output](https://daily.dev/posts/pgfmt-2-1-in-place-formatting-and-pg-dump-compatible-output-iujcxxifh) · PostgreSQL · 28 upvotes · 0 comments - [pgFormatter v5.10 has been released](https://daily.dev/posts/pgformatter-v5-10-has-been-released-qtlapjvbq) · PostgreSQL · 94 upvotes · 2 comments - [pglinter](https://daily.dev/posts/pglinter-8smded7ey) · Hacker News · 12 upvotes · 0 comments - [How to Format Your Queries in SSMS](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-format-your-queries-in-ssms-h7ir7pxcg) · Brent Ozar · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#golang](https://daily.dev/tags/golang), [#sql](https://daily.dev/tags/sql), [#postgresql](https://daily.dev/tags/postgresql) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/introducing-sqlfmt-an-sql-gofmt-style-formatter-fmhcxx1lj) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Introducing sqlfmt: an SQL gofmt-style formatter","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/introducing-sqlfmt-an-sql-gofmt-style-formatter-fmhcxx1lj","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/introducing-sqlfmt-an-sql-gofmt-style-formatter-fmhcxx1lj"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T14:01:33.107Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T09:08:32.682Z","description":"sqlfmt is a new opinionated SQL formatter inspired by gofmt, implementing the 'river alignment' style from The Art of PostgreSQL. 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