In article Install PostgreSQL on WSL, I showed the steps to install PostgreSQL in WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). This page provides some of the commonly used commands in psqlCLI.
Connect to psql
The following commands connects to PostgreSQL server via psql command:
psql -U postgres -W -p 5432 -h localhost
Output should look like the following:
$ psql -U postgres -W -p 5432 -h localhost
Password for user postgres:
psql (10.15 (Ubuntu 10.15-0ubuntu0.18.04.1))
SSL connection (protocol: TLSv1.3, cipher: TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, bits: 256, compression: off)
Type "help" for help.
postgres=#
Show databases
\l
Example output:
postgres=# \l
List of databases
Name | Owner | Encoding | Collate | Ctype | Access privileges
-----------+----------+----------+---------+---------+-----------------------
postgres | postgres | UTF8 | C.UTF-8 | C.UTF-8 |
template0 | postgres | UTF8 | C.UTF-8 | C.UTF-8 | =c/postgres +
| | | | | postgres=CTc/postgres
template1 | postgres | UTF8 | C.UTF-8 | C.UTF-8 | =c/postgres +
| | | | | postgres=CTc/postgres
testdb | postgres | UTF8 | C.UTF-8 | C.UTF-8 |
(4 rows)
Use database
Use the following command to change default database:
\c dbname;
Example output:
postgres=# \c testdb
Password:
SSL connection (protocol: TLSv1.3, cipher: TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, bits: 256, compression: off)
You are now connected to database "testdb" as user "postgres".
testdb=#
List tables
To list tables in the database, run the following commands:
\dt
Example output:
testdb=# \dt
List of relations
Schema | Name | Type | Owner
--------+------------+-------+----------
public | test_table | table | postgres
(1 row)
Run select statement
To run SQL statements, simply type them and end with semi-comma(;).
select * from test_table;
Example output:
testdb=# select * from test_table;
id | value
----+-------
1 | ABC
2 | DEF
(2 rows)
Quit psql CLI
To quit from the command line windows, type the following command:
\q