Connecting Metabase to ClickHouse

Metabase is an easy-to-use, open source UI tool for asking questions about your data.

Metabase is an easy-to-use, open source UI tool for asking questions about your data. Metabase is a Java application that can be run by simply downloading the JAR file and running it with java -jar metabase.jar. Metabase connects to ClickHouse using a JDBC driver that you download and put in the plugins folder:

Goal

In this guide you will ask some questions of your ClickHouse data with Metabase and visualize the answers. One of the answers will look like this:

Add some data

If you don’t have a dataset to work with you can add one of the examples. This guide uses the UK Price Paid dataset, so you might choose that one. There are several others to look at in the same documentation category.

1. Gather your connection details

To connect to ClickHouse with HTTP(S) you need this information:

Parameter(s)	Description
HOST and PORT	Typically, the port is 8443 when using TLS or 8123 when not using TLS.
DATABASE NAME	Out of the box, there is a database named default, use the name of the database that you want to connect to.
USERNAME and PASSWORD	Out of the box, the username is default. Use the username appropriate for your use case.

The details for your ClickHouse Cloud service are available in the ClickHouse Cloud console. Select a service and click Connect:

Choose HTTPS. Connection details are displayed in an example curl command.

If you’re using self-managed ClickHouse, the connection details are set by your ClickHouse administrator.

2. Download the ClickHouse plugin for Metabase

1. If you don’t have a plugins folder, create one as a subfolder of where you have metabase.jar saved.

2. The plugin is a JAR file named clickhouse.metabase-driver.jar. Download the latest version of the JAR file at https://github.com/clickhouse/metabase-clickhouse-driver/releases/latest

3. Save clickhouse.metabase-driver.jar in your plugins folder.

4. Start (or restart) Metabase so that the driver gets loaded properly.

5. Access Metabase at http://hostname:3000. On the initial startup, you will see a welcome screen and have to work your way through a list of questions. If prompted to select a database, select “I’ll add my data later”:

3. Connect Metabase to ClickHouse

1. Click on the gear icon in the top-right corner and select Admin Settings to visit your Metabase admin page.

2. Click on Add a database. Alternately, you can click on the Databases tab and select the Add database button.

3. If your driver installation worked, you will see ClickHouse in the dropdown menu for Database type:

4. Give your database a Display name, which is a Metabase setting - so use any name you like.

5. Enter the connection details of your ClickHouse database. Enable a secure connection if your ClickHouse server is configured to use SSL. For example:

6. Click the Save button and Metabase will scan your database for tables.

4. Run a SQL query

1. Exit the Admin settings by clicking the Exit admin button in the top-right corner.

2. In the top-right corner, click the + New menu and notice you can ask questions, run SQL queries, and build a dashboard:

3. For example, here is a SQL query run on a table named uk_price_paid that returns the average price paid by year from 1995 to 2022:

5. Ask a question

1. Click on + New and select Question. Notice you can build a question by starting with a database and table. For example, the following question is being asked of a table named uk_price_paid in the default database. Here is a simple question that calculates the average price by town, within the county of Greater Manchester:

2. Click the Visualize button to see the results in a tabular view.

3. Below the results, click the Visualization button to change the visualization to a bar chart (or any of the other options available):

Learn more

Find more information about Metabase and how to build dashboards by visiting the Metabase documentation.