Working with ClickHouse Databases Using ClickHouseHTTP

October 03 2026

Connection

library(DBI)
## HTTP connection
con <- dbConnect(
  ClickHouseHTTP::ClickHouseHTTP(),
  host = "localhost",
  port = 8123
)
## HTTPS connection (without ssl peer verification)
con <- dbConnect(
  ClickHouseHTTP::ClickHouseHTTP(),
  host = "localhost",
  port = 8443,
  https = TRUE,
  ssl_verifypeer = FALSE
)

Write a table in the database

library(dplyr)
data("mtcars")
mtcars <- as_tibble(mtcars, rownames = "car")
dbWriteTable(con, "mtcars", mtcars)

Query the database

carsFromDB <- dbReadTable(con, "mtcars")
dbGetQuery(con, "SELECT car, mpg, cyl, hp FROM mtcars WHERE hp>=110")

By default, ClickHouseHTTP relies on the Apache Arrow format provided by ClickHouse. However, as described in the documentation, the following types are not supported in the current implementation of this format: TIME32, FIXED_SIZE_BINARY, JSON, UUID, ENUM. The format argument of the dbGetQuery() function can be used to rely on the TabSeparatedWithNamesAndTypes format.

selCars <- dbGetQuery(
  con,
  "SELECT car, mpg, cyl, hp FROM mtcars WHERE hp>=110",
  format = "TabSeparatedWithNamesAndTypes"
)
## Identifying the original ClickHouse data types
attr(selCars, "type")

Using alternative databases stored in ClickHouse

It’s only possible when sessions are activated with the use_session param.

library(DBI)
con <- dbConnect(
  ClickHouseHTTP::ClickHouseHTTP(),
  host = "localhost",
  port = 8123,
  use_session = TRUE
)

dbSendQuery(con, "CREATE DATABASE swiss")
dbSendQuery(con, "USE swiss")

The chosen database is used until the session expires. It can also be chosen when connecting using the dbname argument of the dbConnect() function.

The example below shows that spaces in column names are supported. It also shows the support of R list using the Array ClickHouse type.

data("swiss")
swiss <- as_tibble(swiss, rownames = "province")
swiss <- mutate(swiss, "pr letters" = strsplit(province, ""))
dbWriteTable(
  conn = con,
  name = "swiss",
  value = swiss,
  engine = "MergeTree() ORDER BY (Fertility, province)"
)
swissFromDB <- dbReadTable(con, "swiss") |>
  as_tibble()

A table from another database can also be accessed as following:

dbReadTable(con, SQL("default.mtcars"))