Configuration¶

When constructing a sender you can pass a configuration string to the Sender.from_conf method.

from questdb.ingress import Sender

conf = "http::addr=localhost:9009;username=admin;password=quest;"
with Sender.from_conf(conf) as sender:
    ...

The format of the configuration string is:

<protocol>::<key>=<value>;<key>=<value>;...;

Note

The keys are case-sensitive.
The trailing semicolon is mandatory.

The valid protocols are:

tcp: ILP/TCP
tcps: ILP/TCP with TLS
http: ILP/HTTP
https: ILP/HTTP with TLS

If you’re unsure which protocol to use, see ILP/TCP or ILP/HTTP.

Only the addr=host:port key is mandatory. It specifies the hostname and port of the QuestDB server.

The same configuration string can also be loaded from the QDB_CLIENT_CONF environment variable. This is useful for keeping sensitive information out of your code.

export QDB_CLIENT_CONF="http::addr=localhost:9009;username=admin;password=quest;"

from questdb.ingress import Sender

with Sender.from_env() as sender:
    ...

Connection¶

addr - str: The address of the server in the form of host:port.

This key-value pair is mandatory, but the port can be defaulted. If omitted, the port will be defaulted to 9009 for TCP(s) and 9000 for HTTP(s).
bind_interface - TCP-only, str: Network interface to bind from. Useful if you have an accelerated network interface (e.g. Solarflare) and want to use it.

The default is 0.0.0.0.

Authentication¶

If you’re using QuestDB enterprise you can read up on creating and permissioning users in the Enterprise quickstart and the role-based access control guides.

HTTP Bearer Token¶

token - str: Bearer token for HTTP authentication.

HTTP Basic Auth¶

username - str: Username for HTTP basic authentication.
password - str: Password for HTTP basic authentication.

TCP Auth¶

username - str: Username for TCP authentication (A.K.A. kid).
token - str: Token for TCP authentication (A.K.A. d).
token_x - str: Token X for TCP authentication (A.K.A. x).
token_y - str: Token Y for TCP authentication (A.K.A. y).

You can additionally set the auth_timeout parameter (milliseconds) to control how long the client will wait for a response from the server during the authentication process. The default is 15 seconds.

See the TCP Authentication and TLS example for more details.

TLS¶

TLS in enabled by selecting the tcps or https protocol.

See the QuestDB enterprise TLS documentation on how to enable this feature in the server.

Open source QuestDB does not offer TLS support out of the box, but you can still use TLS by setting up a proxy in front of QuestDB, such as HAProxy <https://www.haproxy.org/>.

tls_ca - The remote server’s certificate authority verification mechamism.
- 'webpki_roots': Use the webpki-roots Rust crate to recognize certificates.
- 'os_roots': Use the OS-provided certificate store.
- 'webpki_and_os_roots': Use both the webpki-roots Rust crate and the OS-provided certificate store to recognize certificates.
- pem_file: Path to a PEM-encoded certificate authority file. This is useful for testing with self-signed certificates.
The default is: 'webpki_and_os_roots'.
tls_roots - str: Path to a PEM-encoded certificate authority file. When used it defaults the tls_ca to 'pem_file'.
tls_verify - 'on' | 'unsafe_off': Whether to verify the server’s certificate. This should only be used for testing as a last resort and never used in production as it makes the connection vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

The default is: 'on'.

As an example, if you are in a corporate environment and need to use the OS certificate store, you can use the following configuration string:

https::addr=localhost:9009;tls_ca=os_roots;

Alternatively, if you are testing with a self-signed certificate, you can use the following configuration string:

https::addr=localhost:9009;tls_roots=/path/to/cert.pem;

For more details on using self-signed test certificates, see:

For Open Source QuestDB: https://github.com/questdb/c-questdb-client/blob/main/tls_certs/README.md#self-signed-certificates
For QuestDB Enterprise: https://questdb.io/docs/operations/tls/#demo-certificates

Auto-flushing¶

The following parameters control the Auto-flushing behavior.

auto_flush - 'on' | 'off': Global switch for the auto-flushing behavior.

Default: 'on'.
auto_flush_rows - int > 0 | 'off': The number of rows that will trigger a flush. Set to 'off' to disable.

Default: 75000 (HTTP) | 600 (TCP).
auto_flush_bytes - int > 0 | 'off': The number of bytes that will trigger a flush. Set to 'off' to disable.

Default: 'off'.
auto_flush_interval - int > 0 | 'off': The time in milliseconds that will trigger a flush. Set to 'off' to disable.

Default: 1000 (millis).

`auto_flush_interval`¶

The auto_flush_interval parameter controls how long the sender’s buffer can be left unflushed for after appending a new row via the Sender.row or the Sender.dataframe methods. It is defined in milliseconds.

Note that this parameter does not create a timer that counts down each time data is added. Instead, the client checks the time elapsed since the last flush each time new data is added. If the elapsed time exceeds the specified auto_flush_interval, the client automatically flushes the current buffer to the database.

Consider the following example:

from questdb.ingress import Sender, TimestampNanos
import time
conf = "http::addr=localhost:9009;auto_flush_interval=1000;"
with Sender.from_conf(conf) as sender:
    # row 1
    sender.row('table1', columns={'val': 1}, at=TimestampNanos.now())
    time.sleep(60)  # sleep for 1 minute
    # row 2
    sender.row('table2', columns={'val': 2}, at=TimestampNanos.now())

In this example above, “row 1” will not be flushed for a whole minute, until “row 2” is added and the auto_flush_interval limit of 1 second is exceeded, causing both “row 1” and “row 2” to be flushed together.

If you need consistent flushing at specific intervals, you should set auto_flush_interval=off and implement your own timer-based logic. The Advanced Usage documentation should help you.

Buffer¶

init_buf_size - int > 0: Initial buffer capacity.

Default: 65536 (64KiB).
max_buf_size - int > 0: Maximum flushable buffer capacity.

Default: 104857600 (100MiB).
max_name_len - int > 0: Maximum length of a table or column name.

Default: 127.

HTTP Request¶

The following parameters control the HTTP request behavior.

retry_timeout - int > 0: The time in milliseconds to continue retrying after a failed HTTP request. The interval between retries is an exponential backoff starting at 10ms and doubling after each failed attempt up to a maximum of 1 second.

Default: 10000 (10 seconds).
request_timeout - int > 0: The time in milliseconds to wait for a response from the server. This is in addition to the calculation derived from the request_min_throughput parameter.

Default: 10000 (10 seconds).
request_min_throughput - int > 0: Minimum expected throughput in bytes per second for HTTP requests. If the throughput is lower than this value, the connection will time out. This is used to calculate an additional timeout on top of request_timeout. This is useful for large requests. You can set this value to 0 to disable this logic.

Default: 102400 (100 KiB/s).

The final request timeout calculation is:

request_timeout + (buffer_size / request_min_throughput)

Configuration¶

Connection¶

Authentication¶

HTTP Bearer Token¶

HTTP Basic Auth¶

TCP Auth¶

TLS¶

Auto-flushing¶

`auto_flush_interval`¶

Buffer¶

HTTP Request¶

questdb

Table of Contents

This Page

Configuration¶

Connection¶

Authentication¶

HTTP Bearer Token¶

HTTP Basic Auth¶

TCP Auth¶

TLS¶

Auto-flushing¶

auto_flush_interval¶

Buffer¶

HTTP Request¶

`auto_flush_interval`¶