Here it says that if I specify an INTEGER PRIMARY key column it will be used as an alias for rowid. For normal tables it works well, but for virtual FTS tables it does not.
Is there a way to use a rowid alias somehow?
Im using SQLite on Android and I would like to use the _id name for this column.
Thanks
That documentation applies only to 'real' SQLite tables.
With FTS tables, data types are ignored; all columns are intended to be used for text.
FTS tables do have an internal rowid column (also called docid), but it is not possible to rename it.
Related
The full-text search extensions of SQLite (FTS3, FTS4, FTS5) create shadow tables. E.g., if I create FTS5-table
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE test USING fts5(textData);
that will also automatically create several real (non-virtual) tables, with test_content among them, which (apparently) stores the actual data inserted into the original virtual table test.
I know SQLite authors suggest that these shadow tables "should not be accessed directly by the user". But it's not clear from the docs if there are no any guarantee at all about behavior of these tables, or this advise concerns primarily attempts to directly INSERT or UPDATE on them. But what are the risks of reading from these tables?
Specifically - I need another (regular) table to have a FOREIGN KEY which references rowid of the virtual FTS5 table:
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE test USING fts5(textData);
CREATE TABLE myTable (col1 INTEGER REFERENCES test(rowid));
I couldn't find hints on that in the docs, but my own experiments showed that foreign key just doesn't work here - I still can delete records from the test table even though they are referenced from myTable. However, if instead I do
CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE test USING fts5(textData);
CREATE TABLE myTable (col1 INTEGER REFERENCES test_content(id));
then everything seems to work as needed - I can't delete records from the virtual test table if they are referenced from myTable.
This works because, as follows from direct inspection, the rowid value of the test table is always equal to the id column value of the test_content table. Even when I specify rowid manually like in INSERT INTO test (rowid, value) VALUES (424242, 'foobar'); - then a new row appears in the test_content with the corresponding content and the corresponding id equal to 424242 (even if no preceding records were ever in the table).
So basically, my question is - is this correspondence between the rowid of an FTS5-table and the id of the corresponding <name>_content shadow table guaranteed to hold? Or might this break in some cases or in future versions?
This should be an easy one. I need the SQL to insert into a table that has only one column and it is and autoincrement field.
Similar to this post but SQLite (I am new to SQLite).
Inserting rows into a table with one IDENTITY column only
create table ConnectorIDs
(
ID integer primary key AUTOINCREMENT
);
--none of the following work
INSERT INTO ConnectorIDs VALUES(DEFAULT);
INSERT ConnectorIDs DEFAULT VALUES;
Yes this is strange and if you care here is the reason, if you want to tell me a better way. I have several different item tables that all can have many-to-many links between them but sparse. Instead of having n! bridge tables, or one bridge table with a "Type" that I can't guarantee truly maps to the correct table. I will have one ConnectorID table and each item with have a connectorID key. Then I can have one bridge table.
Insert a null value:
INSERT INTO ConnectorIDs VALUES(NULL);
From the docs:
If no ROWID is specified on the insert, or if the specified ROWID has a value of NULL, then an appropriate ROWID is created automatically.
I create a table, lets name it CUSTOMERS in SQLite:
CREATE TABLE "CUSTOMERS" (
"tel" INTEGER NOT NULL,
"customer" VARCHAR ,
);
When I see the table from a GUI (I use SQLite Manager from Firefox), I noticed that there is an extra column rowid which is working like auto-increment. My question is, in tables where I don't use a primary key should I specify a column like:
ROWID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT
If I execute this query PRAGMA table_info(CUSTOMERS); I get only the two columns tel,customer.
Sqlite usually adds a rowid automatically as #laato linked in the comments SqLite : ROWID
That can be removed, but does not need to be specified. So there is no need to add it to the Create Table.
The hidden rowid allows delete's to be targetted at a single row, bu
t if you are using the ROWID as a specific foreign key, it would be better to name a column explicitly. That will then become a synonym with the rowid.
You can see here, as it was commented in your question.
However, if you are in a dilemma what to choose between these options, SQLite recommends that you should not use AUTOINCREMENT attribute because:
The AUTOINCREMENT keyword imposes extra CPU, memory, disk space, and
disk I/O overhead and should be avoided if not strictly needed. It is
usually not needed.
More info you can read here.
I tried INSERT OR REPLACE INTO, but it doesn't preserve the row id when it replaces the record to update it. Another option is do it in two steps: INSERT OR IGNORE INTO then UPDATE, but I would prefer a one step solution. So I am wondering if SQLite has something like the MERGE keyword or other simple solutions?
No, SQLite doesn't support MERGE or upsert.
You can use your two-step solution, but what you probably really want is for the ROWID to be a first-class column in your table. If you declare a column as INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, it will be an alias for the ROWID. Then INSERT OR REPLACE will work fine.
I have a sqlite table that was originally created with:
PRIMARY KEY (`column`);
I now need to remove that primary key and create a new one. Creating a new one is easy, but removing the original seems to be the hard part. If I do
.indices tablename
I don't get the primary key. Some programs show the primary key as
Indexes: 1
[] PRIMARY
The index name is typically in the [].
Any ideas?
You can't.
PRAGMA INDEX_LIST('MyTable');
will give you a list of indices. This will include the automatically generated index for the primary key which will be called something like 'sqlite_autoindex_MyTable_1'.
But unfortunately you cannot drop this index...
sqlite> drop index sqlite_autoindex_MyTable_1;
SQL error: index associated with UNIQUE or PRIMARY KEY constraint cannot be dropped
All you can do is re-create the table without the primary key.
I the database glossary; a primary-key is a type of index where the index order is typically results in the physical ordering of the raw database records. That said any database engine that allows the primary key to be changed is likely reordering the database... so most do not and the operation is up to the programmer to create a script to rename the table and create a new one. So if you want to change the PK there is no magic SQL.
select * from sqlite_master;
table|x|x|2|CREATE TABLE x (a text, b text, primary key (`a`))
index|sqlite_autoindex_x_1|x|3|
You'll see that the second row returned from my quick hack has the index name in the second column, and the table name in the third. Try seeing if that name is anything useful.