Kaggle CLI Output Formatting Documentation

This documentation describes the output formatting options available in the Kaggle CLI.

Output Format Options

The Kaggle CLI supports choosing the output format for various commands that list information.

--csv (or -v)

Historically, many commands supported a -v or --csv option to display output as comma-separated values (CSV) instead of a formatted table.

Example:

kaggle competitions list --csv

--format

We have introduced a new --format option to provide a unified way to specify the output format. It accepts the following values:

• csv: Display output as comma-separated values.
• table: Display output as a formatted table (default).
• json: Display output as JSON.

Example:

kaggle competitions list --format csv
kaggle competitions list --format table
kaggle competitions list --format json

For most commands, the JSON output is a list of objects representing the rows, with keys corresponding to the column headers. For detailed commands like topics show, it returns a structured object:

{
  "topic": { ... },
  "comments": [ ... ]
}

Projections (Field Selection)

The --format option supports optional gcloud-style field selection (projections) by appending a comma-separated list of fields in parentheses to the format name. This allows you to limit the output to only the specified fields and control their order.

Projections are supported for all formats (csv, table, json).

Example:

# Only show 'ref' and 'reward' columns for competitions in a table
kaggle competitions list --format "table(ref,reward)"

# Export only 'id' and 'publicScore' to JSON for team submissions
kaggle competitions team-submissions --format "json(id,publicScore)" <team_id>

# Export only 'name' and 'size' to CSV for dataset files
kaggle datasets files -d zillow/zecon --format "csv(name,size)"

You can specify fields using either their field names (e.g. totalBytes) or their display labels (e.g. size). If a field is not recognized, the CLI will display an error listing the allowed fields.

Special Case: Topics Show

For topics show commands, which output both a parent topic and a list of comments, the projection is applied to both types of objects. Fields matching the topic are applied to the topic output, and fields matching comments are applied to the comment output.

Example:

kaggle forums topics show 123 --format "json(title,content)"

In this case, title (which is a topic field) will be preserved in the topic output, and content (which is a comment field) will be preserved in the comments output.

{
  "topic": {
    "title": "Test Title"
  },
  "comments": [
    {
      "content": "Comment Content"
    }
  ]
}

Mutual Exclusion

The --csv (or -v) option and the --format option are mutually exclusive. You cannot specify both at the same time.

If you attempt to use both, the CLI will display an error:

kaggle competitions list --csv --format csv
# Error: argument --format: not allowed with argument -v/--csv

Supported Commands

The following commands support both --csv (legacy) and --format options:

Competitions

• kaggle competitions list
• kaggle competitions files
• kaggle competitions submissions
• kaggle competitions leaderboard
• kaggle competitions team-submissions
• kaggle competitions episodes
• kaggle competitions pages
• kaggle competitions topic-messages
• kaggle competitions topics list
• kaggle competitions topics show

Datasets

• kaggle datasets list
• kaggle datasets files
• kaggle datasets topics list
• kaggle datasets topics show

Kernels

• kaggle kernels list
• kaggle kernels files
• kaggle kernels topics list
• kaggle kernels topics show

Models

• kaggle models list
• kaggle models topics list
• kaggle models topics show
• kaggle models instances list
• kaggle models instances files
• kaggle models instances versions list
• kaggle models instances versions files

Forums

• kaggle forums list
• kaggle forums topics list
• kaggle forums topics show

Benchmarks

• kaggle benchmarks topics list
• kaggle benchmarks topics show

Quota

• kaggle quota