connections-pane.qmd

---
title: "Connections Pane"
---

The Connections Pane allows you to explore database connections created within your R or Python sessions.
It also includes basic support for storing and managing connection strings for future usage.

![Connections Pane](images/connections-pane.png)

## Opening a connection using R

To open a connection in Positron Connections Pane, you need to connect to a database using any
package that supports the connections contract, such as [odbc](https://github.com/r-dbi/odbc), [sparklyr](https://github.com/rstudio/sparklyr),
[bigrquery](https://github.com/r-dbi/bigrquery), and others.

The Positron Connections Pane implements [RStudio's connections contract](https://rstudio.github.io/rstudio-extensions/connections-contract.html); this means that any package that works within RStudio's Connections Pane should work within the Positron Connections Pane.

Here is an example of how to open a connection using the [connections](https://github.com/rstudio/connections) package to open a SQLite connection:

``` r
tmp <- tempfile()
dir.create(tmp)
dbplyr::nycflights13_sqlite(path = tmp)
con <- connections::connection_open(RSQLite::SQLite(), file.path(tmp, "nycflights13.sqlite"))
```

You can also open an existing connection from the Variables Pane, as shown below for Python, and you can find more information about connecting to a specific database [from Posit Solutions Engineering](https://solutions.posit.co/connections/db/databases/).

## Opening a connection using Python

Currently we support connections created using the [sqlite3](https://docs.python.org/3/library/sqlite3.html) and [SQLAlchemy](https://www.sqlalchemy.org) modules.
To open a connection in the Connections Pane, create a top level object that represents the connection/engine.

``` python
import sqlite3
conn = sqlite3.connect("nycflights13.sqlite")
```

You can then either use `%connection_show conn` to open the connection in the Connections Pane or click on
the database icon that appears close to the object name in the Variables Pane.

![Variables Pane showing a connection object](images/connections-pane-variables-pane.png)

That will bring up the Connections Pane, allowing you to navigate the database.