In SQLite I can run the following query to get a list of columns in a table:
PRAGMA table_info(myTable)
This gives me the columns but no information about what the primary keys may be. Additionally, I can run the following two queries for finding indexes and foreign keys:
PRAGMA index_list(myTable)
PRAGMA foreign_key_list(myTable)
But I cannot seem to figure out how to view the primary keys. Does anyone know how I can go about doing this?
Note: I also know that I can do:
select * from sqlite_master where type = 'table' and name ='myTable';
And it will give the the create table statement which shows the primary keys. But I am looking for a way to do this without parsing the create statement.
The table_info DOES give you a column named pk (last one) indicating if it is a primary key (if so the index of it in the key) or not (zero).
To clarify, from the documentation:
The "pk" column in the result set is zero for columns that are not
part of the primary key, and is the index of the column in the primary
key for columns that are part of the primary key.
Hopefully this helps someone:
After some research and pain the command that worked for me to find the primary key column name was:
SELECT l.name FROM pragma_table_info("Table_Name") as l WHERE l.pk = 1;
For the ones trying to retrieve a pk name in android, and while using the ROOM library.
#Oogway101's answer was throwing an error: "no such column [your_table_name] ... etc.. etc...
my way of query submition was:
String pkSearch = "SELECT l.name FROM pragma_table_info(" + tableName + ") as l WHERE l.pk = 1;";
database.query(new SimpleSQLiteQuery(pkSearch)
I tried using the (") quotations and still error.
String pkSearch = "SELECT l.name FROM pragma_table_info(\"" + tableName + "\") as l WHERE l.pk = 1;";
So my solution was this:
String pragmaInfo = "PRAGMA table_info(" + tableName + ");";
Cursor c = database.query(new SimpleSQLiteQuery(pragmaInfo));
String id = null;
c.moveToFirst();
do {
if (c.getInt(5) == 1) {
id = c.getString(1);
}
} while (c.moveToNext() && id == null);
Log.println(Log.ASSERT, TAG, "AbstractDao: pk is: " + id);
The explanation is that:
A) PRAGMA table_info returns a cursor with various indices, the response is atleast of length 6... didnt check more...
B) index 1 has the column name.
C) index 5 has the "pk" value, either 0 if it is not a primary key, or 1 if its a pk.
You can define more than one pk so this will not bring an accurate result if your table has more than one (IMHO more than one is bad design and balloons the complexity of the database beyond human comprehension).
So how will this fit into the #Dao? (you may ask...)
When making the Dao "abstract" you have access to a default constructor which has the database in it:
from the docummentation:
An abstract #Dao class can optionally have a constructor that takes a Database as its only parameter.
this is the constructor that will grant you access to the query.
There is a catch though...
You may use the Dao during a database creation with the .addCallback() method:
instance = Room.databaseBuilder(context.getApplicationContext(),
AppDatabase2.class, "database")
.addCallback(
//You may use the Daos here.
)
.build();
If you run a query in the constructor of the Dao, the database will enter a feedback loop of infinite instantiation.
This means that the query MUST be used LAZILY (just at the moment the user needs something), and because the value will never change, it can be stored. and never re-queried.
I need to get column names and their tables in a SQLite database. What I need is a resultset with 2 columns: table_name | column_name.
In MySQL, I'm able to get this information with a SQL query on database INFORMATION_SCHEMA. However the SQLite offers table sqlite_master:
sqlite> create table students (id INTEGER, name TEXT);
sqlite> select * from sqlite_master;
table|students|students|2|CREATE TABLE students (id INTEGER, name TEXT)
which results a DDL construction query (CREATE TABLE) which is not helpful for me and I need to parse this to get relevant information.
I need to get list of tables and join them with columns or just get columns along with table name column. So PRAGMA table_info(TABLENAME) is not working for me since I don't have table name. I want to get all column metadata in the database.
Is there a better way to get that information as a result set by querying database?
You've basically named the solution in your question.
To get a list of tables (and views), query sqlite_master as in
SELECT name, sql FROM sqlite_master
WHERE type='table'
ORDER BY name;
(see the SQLite FAQ)
To get information about the columns in a specific table, use PRAGMA table_info(table-name); as explained in the SQLite PRAGMA documentation.
I don't know of any way to get tablename|columnname returned as the result of a single query. I don't believe SQLite supports this. Your best bet is probably to use the two methods together to return the information you're looking for - first get the list of tables using sqlite_master, then loop through them to get their columns using PRAGMA table_info().
Recent versions of SQLite allow you to select against PRAGMA results now, which makes this easy:
SELECT
m.name as table_name,
p.name as column_name
FROM
sqlite_master AS m
JOIN
pragma_table_info(m.name) AS p
ORDER BY
m.name,
p.cid
where p.cid holds the column order of the CREATE TABLE statement, zero-indexed.
David Garoutte answered this here, but this SQL should execute faster, and columns are ordered by the schema, not alphabetically.
Note that table_info also contains
type (the datatype, like integer or text),
notnull (1 if the column has a NOT NULL constraint)
dflt_value (NULL if no default value)
pk (1 if the column is the table's primary key, else 0)
RTFM: https://www.sqlite.org/pragma.html#pragma_table_info
There are ".tables" and ".schema [table_name]" commands which give kind of a separated version to the result you get from "select * from sqlite_master;"
There is also "pragma table_info([table_name]);" command to get a better result for parsing instead of a construction query:
sqlite> .tables
students
sqlite> .schema students
create table students(id INTEGER, name TEXT);
sqlite> pragma table_info(students);
0|id|INTEGER|0||0
1|name|TEXT|0||0
Hope, it helps to some extent...
Another useful trick is to first get all the table names from sqlite_master.
Then for each one, fire off a query "select * from t where 1 = 0". If you analyze the structure of the resulting query - depends on what language/api you're calling it from - you get a rich structure describing the columns.
In python
c = ...db.cursor()
c.execute("select * from t where 1=0");
c.fetchall();
print c.description;
Juraj
PS. I'm in the habit of using 'where 1=0' because the record limiting syntax seems to vary from db to db. Furthermore, a good database will optimize out this always-false clause.
The same effect, in SQLite, is achieved with 'limit 0'.
FYI, if you're using .Net you can use the DbConnection.GetSchema method to retrieve information that usually is in INFORMATION_SCHEMA. If you have an abstraction layer you can have the same code for all types of databases (NOTE that MySQL seems to swich the 1st 2 arguments of the restrictions array).
Try this sqlite table schema parser, I implemented the sqlite table parser for parsing the table definitions in PHP.
It returns the full definitions (unique, primary key, type, precision, not null, references, table constraints... etc)
https://github.com/maghead/sqlite-parser
The syntax follows sqlite create table statement syntax: http://www.sqlite.org/lang_createtable.html
This is an old question but because of the number of times it has been viewed we are adding to the question for the simple reason most of the answers tell you how to find the TABLE names in the SQLite Database
WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN THE TABLE NAME IS NOT IN THE DATABASE ?
This is happening to our app because we are creating TABLES programmatically
So the code below will deal with the issue when the TABLE is NOT in or created by the Database Enjoy
public void toPageTwo(View view){
if(etQuizTable.getText().toString().equals("")){
Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Enter Table Name\n\n"
+" OR"+"\n\nMake Table First", Toast.LENGTH_LONG
).show();
etQuizTable.requestFocus();
return;
}
NEW_TABLE = etQuizTable.getText().toString().trim();
db = dbHelper.getWritableDatabase();
ArrayList<String> arrTblNames = new ArrayList<>();
Cursor c = db.rawQuery("SELECT name FROM sqlite_master WHERE
type='table'", null);
if (c.moveToFirst()) {
while ( !c.isAfterLast() ) {
arrTblNames.add( c.getString( c.getColumnIndex("name")) );
c.moveToNext();
}
}
c.close();
db.close();
boolean matchFound = false;
for(int i=0;i<arrTblNames.size();i++) {
if(arrTblNames.get(i).equals(NEW_TABLE)) {
Intent intent = new Intent(ManageTables.this, TableCreate.class
);
startActivity( intent );
matchFound = true;
}
}
if (!matchFound) {
Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "No Such Table\n\n"
+" OR"+"\n\nMake Table First", Toast.LENGTH_LONG
).show();
etQuizTable.requestFocus();
}
}
I've made a button that removes all the objects in my array, which is shown in my tableView. Then it reloads data and the tableview is empty. But how can I delete all the data from my SQLite database as well, and not just the array? Now the data occurs when I restart. I have tried this:
Button void:
- (void) deleteAllButton_Clicked:(id)sender {
[appDelegate removeAllBooks:nil];
[self.tableView reloadData];
}
Appdelegate void:
-(void) removeAllBooks:(Book *)bookObj {
//Delete it from the database.
[bookObj deleteAllBooks];
//Remove it from the array.
[bookArray removeAllObjects];
}
Delete syntax in Book.m
- (void) deleteAllBooks {
if(deleteStmt == nil) {
const char *sql = "WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO DELETE ALL THE ROWS?";
if(sqlite3_prepare_v2(database, sql, -1, &deleteStmt, NULL) != SQLITE_OK)
NSAssert1(0, #"Error while creating delete statement. '%s'", sqlite3_errmsg(database));
}
//When binding parameters, index starts from 1 and not zero.
sqlite3_bind_int(deleteStmt, 1, bookID);
if (SQLITE_DONE != sqlite3_step(deleteStmt))
NSAssert1(0, #"Error while deleting. '%s'", sqlite3_errmsg(database));
sqlite3_reset(deleteStmt);
}
Well, the normal SQL syntax would be:
DELETE FROM tablename
If you have a standard primary id column (and you should) you can do
DELETE FROM tablename WHERE id > -1;
And this will delete all rows in the table since there is no id less than 0.
DELETE FROM tablename did not work for me. I was using a sqlite3 database on iPhone, which I assume the poster was, as well. For me to get this to work, I needed to:
DROP table tablename
followed by a CREATE statement, if I wanted the table to still exist (without any rows).
Of course, that requires knowing the right CREATE statement. Using the SQLManager plugin for Firefox quickly reverse-engineered for me the correct CREATE statement to use. I never figured out why DELETE FROM tablename didn't work, but it definitely didn't, in my case.
How do I, reliably, check in SQLite, whether a particular user table exists?
I am not asking for unreliable ways like checking if a "select *" on the table returned an error or not (is this even a good idea?).
The reason is like this:
In my program, I need to create and then populate some tables if they do not exist already.
If they do already exist, I need to update some tables.
Should I take some other path instead to signal that the tables in question have already been created - say for example, by creating/putting/setting a certain flag in my program initialization/settings file on disk or something?
Or does my approach make sense?
I missed that FAQ entry.
Anyway, for future reference, the complete query is:
SELECT name FROM sqlite_master WHERE type='table' AND name='{table_name}';
Where {table_name} is the name of the table to check.
Documentation section for reference: Database File Format. 2.6. Storage Of The SQL Database Schema
This will return a list of tables with the name specified; that is, the cursor will have a count of 0 (does not exist) or a count of 1 (does exist)
If you're using SQLite version 3.3+ you can easily create a table with:
create table if not exists TableName (col1 typ1, ..., colN typN)
In the same way, you can remove a table only if it exists by using:
drop table if exists TableName
A variation would be to use SELECT COUNT(*) instead of SELECT NAME, i.e.
SELECT count(*) FROM sqlite_master WHERE type='table' AND name='table_name';
This will return 0, if the table doesn't exist, 1 if it does. This is probably useful in your programming since a numerical result is quicker / easier to process. The following illustrates how you would do this in Android using SQLiteDatabase, Cursor, rawQuery with parameters.
boolean tableExists(SQLiteDatabase db, String tableName)
{
if (tableName == null || db == null || !db.isOpen())
{
return false;
}
Cursor cursor = db.rawQuery(
"SELECT COUNT(*) FROM sqlite_master WHERE type = ? AND name = ?",
new String[] {"table", tableName}
);
if (!cursor.moveToFirst())
{
cursor.close();
return false;
}
int count = cursor.getInt(0);
cursor.close();
return count > 0;
}
You could try:
SELECT name FROM sqlite_master WHERE name='table_name'
See (7) How do I list all tables/indices contained in an SQLite database in the SQLite FAQ:
SELECT name FROM sqlite_master
WHERE type='table'
ORDER BY name;
Use:
PRAGMA table_info(your_table_name)
If the resulting table is empty then your_table_name doesn't exist.
Documentation:
PRAGMA schema.table_info(table-name);
This pragma returns one row for each column in the named table. Columns in the result set include the column name, data type, whether or not the column can be NULL, and the default value for the column. The "pk" column in the result set is zero for columns that are not part of the primary key, and is the index of the column in the primary key for columns that are part of the primary key.
The table named in the table_info pragma can also be a view.
Example output:
cid|name|type|notnull|dflt_value|pk
0|id|INTEGER|0||1
1|json|JSON|0||0
2|name|TEXT|0||0
SQLite table names are case insensitive, but comparison is case sensitive by default. To make this work properly in all cases you need to add COLLATE NOCASE.
SELECT name FROM sqlite_master WHERE type='table' AND name='table_name' COLLATE NOCASE
If you are getting a "table already exists" error, make changes in the SQL string as below:
CREATE table IF NOT EXISTS table_name (para1,para2);
This way you can avoid the exceptions.
If you're using fmdb, I think you can just import FMDatabaseAdditions and use the bool function:
[yourfmdbDatabase tableExists:tableName].
The following code returns 1 if the table exists or 0 if the table does not exist.
SELECT CASE WHEN tbl_name = "name" THEN 1 ELSE 0 END FROM sqlite_master WHERE tbl_name = "name" AND type = "table"
Note that to check whether a table exists in the TEMP database, you must use sqlite_temp_master instead of sqlite_master:
SELECT name FROM sqlite_temp_master WHERE type='table' AND name='table_name';
Here's the function that I used:
Given an SQLDatabase Object = db
public boolean exists(String table) {
try {
db.query("SELECT * FROM " + table);
return true;
} catch (SQLException e) {
return false;
}
}
Use this code:
SELECT name FROM sqlite_master WHERE type='table' AND name='yourTableName';
If the returned array count is equal to 1 it means the table exists. Otherwise it does not exist.
class CPhoenixDatabase():
def __init__(self, dbname):
self.dbname = dbname
self.conn = sqlite3.connect(dbname)
def is_table(self, table_name):
""" This method seems to be working now"""
query = "SELECT name from sqlite_master WHERE type='table' AND name='{" + table_name + "}';"
cursor = self.conn.execute(query)
result = cursor.fetchone()
if result == None:
return False
else:
return True
Note: This is working now on my Mac with Python 3.7.1
You can write the following query to check the table existance.
SELECT name FROM sqlite_master WHERE name='table_name'
Here 'table_name' is your table name what you created. For example
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS country(country_id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, country_code TEXT, country_name TEXT)"
and check
SELECT name FROM sqlite_master WHERE name='country'
Use
SELECT 1 FROM table LIMIT 1;
to prevent all records from being read.
Using a simple SELECT query is - in my opinion - quite reliable. Most of all it can check table existence in many different database types (SQLite / MySQL).
SELECT 1 FROM table;
It makes sense when you can use other reliable mechanism for determining if the query succeeded (for example, you query a database via QSqlQuery in Qt).
The most reliable way I have found in C# right now, using the latest sqlite-net-pcl nuget package (1.5.231) which is using SQLite 3, is as follows:
var result = database.GetTableInfo(tableName);
if ((result == null) || (result.Count == 0))
{
database.CreateTable<T>(CreateFlags.AllImplicit);
}
The function dbExistsTable() from R DBI package simplifies this problem for R programmers. See the example below:
library(DBI)
con <- dbConnect(RSQLite::SQLite(), ":memory:")
# let us check if table iris exists in the database
dbExistsTable(con, "iris")
### returns FALSE
# now let us create the table iris below,
dbCreateTable(con, "iris", iris)
# Again let us check if the table iris exists in the database,
dbExistsTable(con, "iris")
### returns TRUE
I thought I'd put my 2 cents to this discussion, even if it's rather old one..
This query returns scalar 1 if the table exists and 0 otherwise.
select
case when exists
(select 1 from sqlite_master WHERE type='table' and name = 'your_table')
then 1
else 0
end as TableExists
My preferred approach:
SELECT "name" FROM pragma_table_info("table_name") LIMIT 1;
If you get a row result, the table exists. This is better (for me) then checking with sqlite_master, as it will also check attached and temp databases.
This is my code for SQLite Cordova:
get_columnNames('LastUpdate', function (data) {
if (data.length > 0) { // In data you also have columnNames
console.log("Table full");
}
else {
console.log("Table empty");
}
});
And the other one:
function get_columnNames(tableName, callback) {
myDb.transaction(function (transaction) {
var query_exec = "SELECT name, sql FROM sqlite_master WHERE type='table' AND name ='" + tableName + "'";
transaction.executeSql(query_exec, [], function (tx, results) {
var columnNames = [];
var len = results.rows.length;
if (len>0){
var columnParts = results.rows.item(0).sql.replace(/^[^\(]+\(([^\)]+)\)/g, '$1').split(','); ///// RegEx
for (i in columnParts) {
if (typeof columnParts[i] === 'string')
columnNames.push(columnParts[i].split(" ")[0]);
};
callback(columnNames);
}
else callback(columnNames);
});
});
}
Table exists or not in database in swift
func tableExists(_ tableName:String) -> Bool {
sqlStatement = "SELECT name FROM sqlite_master WHERE type='table' AND name='\(tableName)'"
if sqlite3_prepare_v2(database, sqlStatement,-1, &compiledStatement, nil) == SQLITE_OK {
if sqlite3_step(compiledStatement) == SQLITE_ROW {
return true
}
else {
return false
}
}
else {
return false
}
sqlite3_finalize(compiledStatement)
}
c++ function checks db and all attached databases for existance of table and (optionally) column.
bool exists(sqlite3 *db, string tbl, string col="1")
{
sqlite3_stmt *stmt;
bool b = sqlite3_prepare_v2(db, ("select "+col+" from "+tbl).c_str(),
-1, &stmt, 0) == SQLITE_OK;
sqlite3_finalize(stmt);
return b;
}
Edit: Recently discovered the sqlite3_table_column_metadata function. Hence
bool exists(sqlite3* db,const char *tbl,const char *col=0)
{return sqlite3_table_column_metadata(db,0,tbl,col,0,0,0,0,0)==SQLITE_OK;}
You can also use db metadata to check if the table exists.
DatabaseMetaData md = connection.getMetaData();
ResultSet resultSet = md.getTables(null, null, tableName, null);
if (resultSet.next()) {
return true;
}
If you are running it with the python file and using sqlite3 obviously. Open command prompt or bash whatever you are using use
python3 file_name.py first in which your sql code is written.
Then Run sqlite3 file_name.db.
.table this command will give tables if they exist.
I wanted to add on Diego Vélez answer regarding the PRAGMA statement.
From https://sqlite.org/pragma.html we get some useful functions that can can return information about our database.
Here I quote the following:
For example, information about the columns in an index can be read using the index_info pragma as follows:
PRAGMA index_info('idx52');
Or, the same content can be read using:
SELECT * FROM pragma_index_info('idx52');
The advantage of the table-valued function format is that the query can return just a subset of the PRAGMA columns, can include a WHERE clause, can use aggregate functions, and the table-valued function can be just one of several data sources in a join...
Diego's answer gave PRAGMA table_info(table_name) like an option, but this won't be of much use in your other queries.
So, to answer the OPs question and to improve Diegos answer, you can do
SELECT * FROM pragma_table_info('table_name');
or even better,
SELECT name FROM pragma_table_list('table_name');
if you want to mimic PoorLuzers top-voted answer.
If you deal with Big Table, I made a simple hack with Python and Sqlite and you can make the similar idea with any other language
Step 1: Don't use (if not exists) in your create table command
you may know that this if you run this command that will have an exception if you already created the table before, and want to create it again, but this will lead us to the 2nd step.
Step 2: use try and except (or try and catch for other languages) to handle the last exception
here if you didn't create the table before, the try case will continue, but if you already did, you can put do your process at except case and you will know that you already created the table.
Here is the code:
def create_table():
con = sqlite3.connect("lists.db")
cur = con.cursor()
try:
cur.execute('''CREATE TABLE UNSELECTED(
ID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY)''')
print('the table is created Now')
except sqlite3.OperationalError:
print('you already created the table before')
con.commit()
cur.close()
You can use a simple way, i use this method in C# and Xamarin,
public class LoginService : ILoginService
{
private SQLiteConnection dbconn;
}
in login service class, i have many methods for acces to the data in sqlite, i stored the data into a table, and the login page
it only shows when the user is not logged in.
for this purpose I only need to know if the table exists, in this case if it exists it is because it has data
public int ExisteSesion()
{
var rs = dbconn.GetTableInfo("Sesion");
return rs.Count;
}
if the table does not exist, it only returns a 0, if the table exists it is because it has data and it returns the total number of rows it has.
In the model I have specified the name that the table must receive to ensure its correct operation.
[Table("Sesion")]
public class Sesion
{
[PrimaryKey]
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Token { get; set; }
public string Usuario { get; set; }
}
Look into the "try - throw - catch" construct in C++. Most other programming languages have a similar construct for handling errors.