Documentation

Use the influxctl CLI to query data

Use the influxctl query command to query data in InfluxDB Clustered with SQL or InfluxQL.

Provide the following with your command:

  • Database token: A database token with read permissions on the queried database. By default, this uses the database setting from the influxctl connection profile or the --token command flag.

  • Database name: The name of the database to query. By default, this uses the database setting from the influxctl connection profile or the --database command flag.

  • Query language (Optional): The query language of the query. Use the --language flag to specify one of the following query languages:

    • sql (default)
    • influxql
  • Query: SQL or InfluxQL query to execute. Pass the query in one of the following ways:

    • a string on the command line
    • a path to a file that contains the query
    • a single dash (-) to read the query from stdin
influxctl query \
  --token 
DATABASE_TOKEN
\
--database
DATABASE_NAME
\
"SELECT * FROM home"
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influxctl query \
  --token 
DATABASE_TOKEN
\
--database
DATABASE_NAME
\
/path/to/query.sql
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cat ./query.sql | influxctl query \
  --token 
DATABASE_TOKEN
\
--database
DATABASE_NAME
\
-
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influxctl query \
  --token 
DATABASE_TOKEN
\
--database
DATABASE_NAME
\
--language influxql \ "SELECT * FROM home"
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influxctl query \
  --token 
DATABASE_TOKEN
\
--database
DATABASE_NAME
\
--language influxql \ /path/to/query.influxql
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cat ./query.influxql | influxctl query \
  --token 
DATABASE_TOKEN
\
--database
DATABASE_NAME
\
--language influxql \ -
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Replace the following:

  • DATABASE_TOKEN: Database token with read access to the queried database
  • DATABASE_NAME: Name of the database to query

Output format

The influxctl query command supports the following output formats:

  • table (default)
  • json

Use the --format flag to specify the output format:

influxctl query \
  --format json \
  "SELECT * FROM home WHERE time >= '2025-03-25T08:00:00Z' LIMIT 5"
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View example table-formatted results

View example JSON-formatted results

Timestamp format

When using the table output format, you can specify which of the following timestamp formats to use to display timestamp values in the query results:

influxctl query \
  --time-format unixnano \
  "SELECT * FROM home WHERE time >= '2025-03-25T08:00:00Z' LIMIT 5"
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View example results with unix nanosecond timestamps


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The future of Flux

Flux is going into maintenance mode. You can continue using it as you currently are without any changes to your code.

Read more

InfluxDB 3 Core and Enterprise are now in Beta

InfluxDB 3 Core and Enterprise are now available for beta testing, available under MIT or Apache 2 license.

InfluxDB 3 Core is a high-speed, recent-data engine that collects and processes data in real-time, while persisting it to local disk or object storage. InfluxDB 3 Enterprise is a commercial product that builds on Core’s foundation, adding high availability, read replicas, enhanced security, and data compaction for faster queries. A free tier of InfluxDB 3 Enterprise will also be available for at-home, non-commercial use for hobbyists to get the full historical time series database set of capabilities.

For more information, check out: