Use .bigqueryrc to set BigQuery global configuration

I started using the nice vim plugin vim-dadbod which allows to fire database queries and see the output inside vim/neovim.

While setting it up to work with BigQuery I ran into the error coming from the fact that BigQuery’s format to name a table has changed in time and bq uses the old one (legacy) as default. The legacy format reads: project:dataset.table (notice :) while the newer format goes by: project.dataset.table (with . instead).

It turns out there is a file called .bigqueryrc where you can set a global configuration and tell bq (the command line tool to interact with BigQuery in the terminal) to use the newer format by setting the flag use_legacy_sql=false:

credential_file = /path/to/some/file.json
project_id = name-of-your-default-project

[query]
use_legacy_sql = false

The CLI-tool bq also accepts the file as optional argument so you can pass custom config for a query. If you run bq --help you’ll see:

  --bigqueryrc: Path to configuration file. The configuration file specifies new
    defaults for any flags, and can be overrridden by specifying the flag on the
    command line. If the --bigqueryrc flag is not specified, the BIGQUERYRC
    environment variable is used. If that is not specified, the path
    "~/.bigqueryrc" is used.
    (default: '~/.bigqueryrc')
    

Read more about that in the official documetation.

/Fin

Any bugs, questions, comments, suggestions? Ping me on twitter or drop me an e-mail (fabridamicelli at gmail).
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