Can I use JOOQ as an SQL parser?

Question

I'm trying to parse a SELECT statement in Java. I'm familiar with JOOQ, and was hoping to use that. I know it's not explicitly designed as an SQL parser—it's actually a lot more than that, so I was thinking there might be a way to use its internal parsers to parse SELECT queries.

I saw some information on how to access some of JOOQ's internals using the Visitor pattern, but I need to navigate inside the query using a tree-like structure that will allow access to each part of the query individually. I don't want to use the Visitor pattern for all use cases.

Is this possible? How would I go about doing it?

Answer 1

Yes, you can. jOOQ has a parser that can be used:

• Programmatically
• As a CLI
• Online, as a SQL dialect translator

As of jOOQ 3.17, there's an experimental model API which can be used to traverse your expression tree externally, e.g. using pattern matching, or internally using the new Traverser API. It is also still possible to traverse the expression tree using a VisitListener when rendering the expression tree back to SQL.