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Query files

DuckDB supports querying many file formats including CSV, JSON, Parquet, and Excel. This example shows how to query Parquet files.

Apache Parquet is an efficient columnar storage format widely used in data engineering.

Download Parquet files​

Download a Yellow Taxi record file:

wget https://d37ci6vzurychx.cloudfront.net/trip-data/yellow_tripdata_2026-01.parquet

Run µQuery with files​

Mount the file into the container:

docker run -p 8080:8080 -v ./yellow_tripdata_2026-01.parquet:/tmp/yellow_tripdata_2026-01.parquet fb64/uquery

Query parquet files​

curl -X POST http://localhost:8080 \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -H "Content-Type: text/plain" \
  -d "select * from read_parquet('/tmp/yellow_tripdata_2026-01.parquet') limit 10"

Query over HTTP(S)​

The DuckDB HTTPFS extension is pre-installed in the Docker image, so you can query remote files directly without downloading them:

curl -X POST http://localhost:8080 \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  -H "Content-Type: text/plain" \
  -d "select * from read_parquet('https://d37ci6vzurychx.cloudfront.net/trip-data/yellow_tripdata_2026-01.parquet') limit 10"

This works for any HTTPS-accessible Parquet, CSV, or JSON file.