datasette 1.0a34
Datasette 1.0a34 introduces tools to insert, edit, and delete rows directly within the Datasette interface, available on table and row pages. The feature was inspired by Datasette Agent, which already supported SQL write operations via chat.
Background
- **Datasette** is an open-source tool created by Simon Willison for exploring and publishing tabular data (CSV, SQLite databases, etc.) as an interactive web interface. Non-technical users can browse, filter, and visualize data; technical users can query it with SQL.
- **Simon Willison** is a well-known web developer and co-creator of the Django web framework. He develops Datasette as a side project that has become widely used in journalism, data science, and open-data communities.
- **Datasette Agent** is an experimental AI-powered chat interface for Datasette that lets users ask questions about their data in natural language and get answers (including SQL queries and data visualizations). It recently gained the ability to write SQL (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE), which made the absence of basic insert/edit/delete in the standard Datasette UI feel ironic.
- This alpha release (1.0a34) finally adds the ability to insert, edit, and delete rows directly in the Datasette web interface — a basic CRUD feature that had been missing for years despite being a natural expectation of any database-backed web app.