Install beanquery with Homebrew, Nix, apt

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• bean-query

Project history

Beancount's query-language documentation describes bean-query as a custom SQL-like client created because plain SQLite export was awkward for Beancount's inventory and lot-aware accounting model.

The current beanquery repository presents it as a standalone, customizable, extensible SQL query tool that works on tabular data including Beancount ledgers.

Adoption history

beanquery is mainly adopted as part of the Beancount ecosystem. The supplied package metadata shows it packaged for Homebrew, Debian as python3-beanquery, and Nix.

How it is used

The Beancount docs show bean-query running interactively on a ledger file or receiving a query directly on the command line, for example to produce balances, journals, and custom accounting reports.

Why package nerds care

beanquery is the small-tool companion to Beancount: it turns ledger data into queryable tabular output without requiring users to flatten accounting inventories into a general SQL database first.

Timeline

• 2014: Beancount documentation says about 70 percent of the planned query-language features were implemented and the first iteration was merged.
• 2021: The official GitHub repository for beanquery was created as a separate project.
• 2024: Beancount v3's README describes former v2 tools moving into independent GitHub projects, matching beanquery's standalone packaging role.

Related projects

• Beancount is the primary related project. The tool also overlaps conceptually with SQL shells and Beancount's older SQLite-export experiments.

Sources

• https://beancount.github.io/docs/beancount_query_language/
• https://github.com/beancount/beancount#readme
• https://github.com/beancount/beanquery#readme
• input.json source_facts.package-manager