issue_comments

FWIW I implemented something similar with a bit of plugin code:

```python @hookimpl def canned_queries(datasette: Datasette, database: str) -> Mapping[str, str]: # load "canned queries" from the filesystem under # www/sql/db/query_name.sql queries = {}

sqldir = Path(__file__).parent.parent / "sql"
if database:
    sqldir = sqldir / database

if not sqldir.is_dir():
    return queries

for f in sqldir.glob('*.sql'):
    try:
        sql = f.read_text('utf8').strip()
        if not len(sql):
            log(f"Skipping empty canned query file: {f}")
            continue
        queries[f.stem] = { "sql": sql }
    except OSError as err:
        log(err)

return queries

```

I actually think it would be a useful thing to add support for in datasette. It wouldn't be difficult to unwind an array of params and add the placeholders automatically.

The easiest or most straightforward thing to do is to use named parameters like:

sql select * where key IN (:p1, :p2, :p3)

And simply construct the list of placeholders dynamically based on the number of values.

Doing this is possible with datasette if you forgo "canned queries" and just use the raw query endpoint and pass the query sql, along with p1, p2 ... in the request.

It's a really great API and the documentation is really great too. Honestly, in more than 20 years of professional experience, I haven't worked with any software API that was more of a joy to use.

There isn't any way to do this with sqlite as far as I know. The only option is to insert the right number of ? placeholders into the sql template and then provide an array of values.

FWIW I've written some web components that consume the json api and I think it's a really nice way to work with datasette. I like the combination with datasette+sqlite as a back-end feeding data to a front-end that's entirely javascript + html.

This sounds really ambitious but also really awesome. I like the idea that basically any piece of a page could be selectively replaced.

It sort of sounds like a python asyncio version of https://github.com/observablehq/runtime

Writing the tests will be a bit tricky since we need to confirm that the include_table_top(datasette, database, actor, table) arguments were all passed correctly but the only thing we get back from the plugin is a list of templates. Maybe encode those values into the template names somehow?

Why not return a data structure instead of just a template name?

I've already done some custom hacking to modify datasette but the plugin mechanism you are building here would be much cleaner than what I've built. I'd be happy to help with testing this PR and fleshing it out further if you are still considering merging this.