Extensions

Kùzu has an extension framework designed to extend its capabilities. Our goal is to implement more and more extensions over time, such as supporting new data types, functions and indices, or to better integrate with external systems.

Extensions expose several internal interfaces of Kùzu, for example, the FileSystem, and can have multiple implementations. Extensions are implementations of these interfaces that can be dynamically loaded at runtime.

Official Extensions

The available extensions for each OS are listed here.

Note

Third-party developers are also welcome to develop their own extensions for custom functionality. However, it’s important to note that the extension API is still in development and may change in the future. When it becomes more stable, we will document in more detail how users can implement their own extensions For now, please reach out to us on Discord or GitHub if you need a custom extension for your use case.

Available extensions

The following extensions are implemented, with more to come:

Extension Name	Description
httpfs	Read and write files over HTTP(s) protocol. Also used for attaching to a remote Kùzu database.
duckdb	Scan data from an attached DuckDB database
postgres	Scan data from an attached PostgreSQL database
sqlite	Scan data from an attached SQLite database
json	Scan and manipulate JSON data

Using Extensions in Kùzu

This section describes how to use officially supported extensions in Kùzu.

Installing an official extension

Kùzu requires the user to install the extension before loading and using it. Official extensions can be simply installed by running the install command:

INSTALL <extension_name>

Where extension_name is the name of the extension to be installed.

Loading an official extension

After installation, a load command is required to ask Kùzu to dynamically load the shared library. Extensions installed using the INSTALL command can be loaded directly as follows:

LOAD EXTENSION <extension_name>

Note

A new Database object at the C++ level is instantiated every time a new CLI session is started, or when a client script that embeds Kùzu is run. For this reason, the LOAD EXTENSION command must be run every time a new CLI session is started or a client script is run.