Syntax Overview

FlyQL queries consist of one or more conditions joined by and / or, optionally negated with not. Each condition is either a comparison or a truthy check.

Basic Query Structure

status = 200 and active and not archived

• status = 200 — status field equals 200
• active — active field has a truthy value
• not archived — archived field is falsy (null, empty, zero, or false)

More Examples

service != 'api' or user = "john doe"

message ~ "error.*" and not debug

(a = 1 or b = 2) and not (c = 3 and d = 4)

status in [200, 201] and method not in ['DELETE', 'PUT']

message has 'error' and tags not has 'debug'

General Rules

• Standalone keys — A key without an operator is treated as a truthy check: active
• Comparisons — A key with an operator must have a corresponding value: status = 200
• Whitespace — Spaces around operators are optional: status=200 and status = 200 are equivalent
• Standard operator precedence — not binds tightest, then and, then or (same as SQL, Python, JavaScript, Go): a = 1 or b = 2 and c = 3 is parsed as a = 1 or (b = 2 and c = 3)
• Parentheses — Use ( ) to override the default precedence: (a = 1 or b = 2) and c = 3

Syntax Sections

• Operators — Comparison, regex, list membership, pattern matching, and containment
• Boolean Logic — and, or, not, standard precedence, parenthesized grouping
• Pattern Matching — Regex (~, !~) and like/ilike with SQL wildcards (%, _)
• Lists — in and not in with list values
• Containment — has and not has for substring, key existence, and item membership
• Values & Expressions — Truthy/falsy, strings, numbers, booleans, null, columns, arrays, temporal functions
• Nested Keys — Dot-separated paths and quoted key segments
• Parameters — $name and $1 placeholders resolved at runtime via bindParams()
• Reserved Words — Using keyword-named columns (not, has, in, etc.) and when quoting is needed
• Dates — String-literal date comparisons and when to reach for temporal functions instead
• Query Recipes — Common query patterns with full parse → generate → run examples in Python, Go, and JavaScript