@smooai/clickhouse-kit

Drizzle-shaped, TS-only schema toolkit for ClickHouse. Define a table once and get the CREATE TABLE DDL, the inferred TypeScript row type, and drizzle-zod-style select/insert schemas — plus forward-only migrations and a schema-drift gate.

If you like defining a Drizzle pgTable and calling createSelectSchema(table), this gives you the same ergonomics for ClickHouse.

import { ch, clickhouseTable, toCreateTableSql, createSelectSchema } from "@smooai/clickhouse-kit";

export const events = clickhouseTable(
  "events",
  {
    ts: ch.dateTime64(3),
    org_id: ch.lowCardinality(ch.string()),
    event_id: ch.uuid(),
    name: ch.string(),
    value: ch.float64(),
    attributes: ch.mapStringString(),
    ingested_at: ch.dateTime().default("now()"),
  },
  {
    engine: "MergeTree()",
    partitionBy: "(org_id, toDate(ts))",
    orderBy: ["org_id", "ts", "event_id"],
    // Declared structurally — DateTime64 columns auto-wrap in toDateTime()
    // for the TO VOLUME move, so you can't emit a BAD_TTL_EXPRESSION.
    ttl: {
      column: "ts",
      moveToVolumeAfter: { interval: "14 DAY", volume: "cold" },
      deleteAfter: "90 DAY",
    },
    settings: { storage_policy: "hot_cold" },
  },
);

toCreateTableSql(events); // → the CREATE TABLE DDL
createSelectSchema(events); // → a Zod schema for a read row (with optional per-column overrides)
type EventRow = typeof events.$inferSelect; // → the inferred TS row type

Why

The ClickHouse TypeScript ecosystem has no mature, vendor-neutral schema/migration tool with first-class Zod. This is that: schema-as-code, type-safe rows, Zod for ingest/query validation, versioned migrations, and drift detection — in plain TypeScript, with no bun requirement and no managed-service lock-in.

Install

npm i @smooai/clickhouse-kit zod
# or: pnpm add @smooai/clickhouse-kit zod

zod (v4) is a peer dependency. The official @clickhouse/client (or anything matching the small ClickHouseClient interface) is what you pass to the runner/drift gate — this package has no runtime client dependency.

Schema as code

• Columns: ch.string(), ch.uuid(), ch.float64(), ch.uint8/16/32/64(), ch.dateTime(), ch.dateTime64(precision, tz?), ch.lowCardinality(inner), ch.mapStringString(), ch.aggregateFunction(signature, zod?). Add a DEFAULT with .default('now()').
• clickhouseTable(name, columns, options) — engine, orderBy, partitionBy, ttl, indexes, settings.
• clickhouseMaterializedView(name, { to, asSelect }) for CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW … TO … AS ….
• createSelectSchema(table, overrides?) / createInsertSchema(table, overrides?) — Zod, drizzle-zod style. insert makes DEFAULT columns optional.

Migrations (forward-only)

Keep your table definitions in a module, then generate numbered .sql migrations from them:

import { generateClickHouseMigrations } from "@smooai/clickhouse-kit";

generateClickHouseMigrations("clickhouse/migrations", [events], [eventsByDayMv]);
// → writes 0001_events.sql, 0002_events_by_day_mv.sql + _journal.json (tables before MVs)

Apply them with your own client:

import { createClient } from "@clickhouse/client";
import { runClickHouseMigrations } from "@smooai/clickhouse-kit";

const client = createClient({ url, username, password });
const result = await runClickHouseMigrations(client, "clickhouse/migrations");
// ensures a _ch_migrations tracking table, applies only un-applied files, records each

Wire those two into your own package.json scripts (e.g. db:generate:clickhouse / db:migrate) — the package is library-first and doesn't impose a CLI.

No auto-diff — on purpose

There is no schema differ. New tables get a generated CREATE; changes to an existing table are hand-authored as a fresh forward-only migration — exactly like Drizzle's custom SQL migrations. A correct ClickHouse ALTER differ (immutable ORDER BY, materialized-view recreation, quirky TTL/settings semantics) is a large, brittle surface we deliberately don't ship.

Drift gate

import { checkClickHouseDrift } from "@smooai/clickhouse-kit";

const { drift } = await checkClickHouseDrift(client, [events]);
// reports missing_table / missing_column / extra_column / type_mismatch (tolerant of cosmetic type spacing)
if (drift.length) process.exit(1);

Run it in CI or post-deploy to catch live schema that has diverged from your definitions.

License

MIT © SmooAI