Create table in SQLite only if it doesn't exist already - sqlite

I want to create a table in a SQLite database only if doesn't exist already. Is there any way to do this? I don't want to drop the table if it exists, only create it if it doesn't.

From http://www.sqlite.org/lang_createtable.html:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS some_table (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, ...);

Am going to try and add value to this very good question and to build on #BrittonKerin's question in one of the comments under #David Wolever's fantastic answer. Wanted to share here because I had the same challenge as #BrittonKerin and I got something working (i.e. just want to run a piece of code only IF the table doesn't exist).
# for completeness lets do the routine thing of connections and cursors
conn = sqlite3.connect(db_file, timeout=1000)
cursor = conn.cursor()
# get the count of tables with the name
tablename = 'KABOOM'
cursor.execute("SELECT count(name) FROM sqlite_master WHERE type='table' AND name=? ", (tablename, ))
print(cursor.fetchone()) # this SHOULD BE in a tuple containing count(name) integer.
# check if the db has existing table named KABOOM
# if the count is 1, then table exists
if cursor.fetchone()[0] ==1 :
print('Table exists. I can do my custom stuff here now.... ')
pass
else:
# then table doesn't exist.
custRET = myCustFunc(foo,bar) # replace this with your custom logic

Related

How to write complex recursive maria db query

Im trying to write a recursive query for a use on a old and poorly designed database - and so the queries get quite complex.
Here is the (relevant) table relationships
Because people asked - here is the creation code for these tables:
CREATE TABLE CircuitLayout(
CircuitLayoutID int,
PRIMARY KEY (CircuitLayoutID)
);
CREATE TABLE LitCircuit (
LitCircuitID int,
CircuitLayoutID int,
PRIMARY KEY (LitCircuitID)
FOREIGN KEY (CircuitLayoutID) REFERENCES CircuitLayout(CircuitLayoutID)
);
CREATE TABLE CircuitLayoutItem(
CircuitLayoutItemID int,
CircuitLayoutID int,
TableName varchar(255),
TablePK int,
PRIMARY KEY (CircuitLayoutItemID)
FOREIGN KEY (CircuitLayoutID) REFERENCES CircuitLayout(CircuitLayoutID)
);
TableName refers to another table in the database and thus TablePK is a primary key from the specified table
One of the valid options for TableName is LitCircuit
I'm trying to write a query that will select a circuit and any circuit it is related to
I am having trouble understanding the syntax for recursive ctes
my non-functional attempt is this:
WITH RECURSIVE carries AS (
SELECT LitCircuit.LitCircuitID AS recurseList FROM LitCircuit
JOIN CircuitLayoutItem ON LitCircuit.CircuitLayoutID = CircuitLayoutItem.CircuitLayoutID
WHERE CircuitLayoutItem.TableName = "LitCircuit" AND CircuitLayoutItem.TablePK IN (00340)
UNION
SELECT LitCircuit.LitCircuitID AS CircuitIDs FROM LitCircuit
JOIN CircuitLayout ON LitCircuit.CircuitLayoutID = CircuitLayoutItem.CircuitLayoutID
WHERE CircuitLayoutItem.TableName = "LitCircuit" AND CircuitLayoutItem.TablePK IN (SELECT recurseList FROM carries)
)
SELECT * FROM carries;
the "00340" is a dummy number for testing, and it would get replaced with an actual list in usage
What i'm attempting to do is get a list of LitCircuitIDs based on one or many LitCircuitIDs - that's the anchor member, and that works fine.
What I want to do is take this result and feed it back into itself.
I lack an understanding of how to access data from the anchor member:
I don't know if it is a table with the columns from the select in the anchor or if it is simply a list of resulting values
I dont understand if or where I need to include "carries" in the FROM part of a query
If I were to write this function in python I would do it like this:
def get_circuits(circuit_list):
result_list = []
for layout_item_key, layout_item in CircuitLayoutItem.items():
if layout_item['TableName'] == "LitCircuit" and layout_item['TablePK'] in circuit_list:
layout = layout_item['CircuitLayoutID']
for circuit_key, circuit in LitCircuit.items():
if circuit["CircuitLayoutID"] == layout:
result_list.append(circuit_key)
result_list.extend(get_circuits(result_list))
return result_list
How do I express this in SQL?
danblack's comment made me realize something I was missing:
Here is what I was trying to do:
WITH RECURSIVE carries AS (
SELECT LitCircuit.LitCircuitID FROM LitCircuit
JOIN CircuitLayoutItem ON LitCircuit.CircuitLayoutID = CircuitLayoutItem.CircuitLayoutID
WHERE CircuitLayoutItem.TableName = 'LitCircuit' AND CircuitLayoutItem.TablePK IN (00340)
UNION ALL
SELECT LitCircuit.LitCircuitID FROM carries
JOIN CircuitLayoutItem ON carries.LitCircuitID = CircuitLayoutItem.TablePK
JOIN LitCircuit ON CircuitLayoutItem.CircuitLayoutID = LitCircuit.CircuitLayoutID
WHERE CircuitLayoutItem.TableName = 'LitCircuit'
)
SELECT DISTINCT LitCircuitID FROM carries;
I did not think of the CTE as a table to query against - rather just a result set, so I did not realize you have to SELECT from it - or in general treat it like a table.

"Insert if not exists" statement in SQLite

I have an SQLite database. I am trying to insert values (users_id, lessoninfo_id) in table bookmarks, only if both do not exist before in a row.
INSERT INTO bookmarks(users_id,lessoninfo_id)
VALUES(
(SELECT _id FROM Users WHERE User='"+$('#user_lesson').html()+"'),
(SELECT _id FROM lessoninfo
WHERE Lesson="+lesson_no+" AND cast(starttime AS int)="+Math.floor(result_set.rows.item(markerCount-1).starttime)+")
WHERE NOT EXISTS (
SELECT users_id,lessoninfo_id from bookmarks
WHERE users_id=(SELECT _id FROM Users
WHERE User='"+$('#user_lesson').html()+"') AND lessoninfo_id=(
SELECT _id FROM lessoninfo
WHERE Lesson="+lesson_no+")))
This gives an error saying:
db error near where syntax.
If you never want to have duplicates, you should declare this as a table constraint:
CREATE TABLE bookmarks(
users_id INTEGER,
lessoninfo_id INTEGER,
UNIQUE(users_id, lessoninfo_id)
);
(A primary key over both columns would have the same effect.)
It is then possible to tell the database that you want to silently ignore records that would violate such a constraint:
INSERT OR IGNORE INTO bookmarks(users_id, lessoninfo_id) VALUES(123, 456)
If you have a table called memos that has two columns id and text you should be able to do like this:
INSERT INTO memos(id,text)
SELECT 5, 'text to insert'
WHERE NOT EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM memos WHERE id = 5 AND text = 'text to insert');
If a record already contains a row where text is equal to 'text to insert' and id is equal to 5, then the insert operation will be ignored.
I don't know if this will work for your particular query, but perhaps it give you a hint on how to proceed.
I would advice that you instead design your table so that no duplicates are allowed as explained in #CLs answer below.
For a unique column, use this:
INSERT OR REPLACE INTO tableName (...) values(...);
For more information, see: sqlite.org/lang_insert
insert into bookmarks (users_id, lessoninfo_id)
select 1, 167
EXCEPT
select user_id, lessoninfo_id
from bookmarks
where user_id=1
and lessoninfo_id=167;
This is the fastest way.
For some other SQL engines, you can use a Dummy table containing 1 record.
e.g:
select 1, 167 from ONE_RECORD_DUMMY_TABLE

sqlite3 if exists alternative

I am trying to run simple query for sqlite which is update a record if not exists.
I could have used Insert or replace but article_tags table doesn't have any primary key as it is a relational table.
How can I write this query for sqlite as if not exists is not supported.
And I don't have idea how to use CASE for this ?
Table Structure:
articles(id, content)
article_tags(article_id, tag_id)
tag(id, name)
SQLITE Incorrect Syntax Tried
insert into article_tags (article_id, tag_id ) values ( 2,7)
if not exists (select 1 from article_tags where article_id =2 AND tag_id=7)
I think the correct way to do this would be to add a primary key to the article_tags table, a composite one crossing both columns. That's the normal way to do many-to-many relationship tables.
In other words (pseudo-DDL):
create table article_tags (
article_id int references articles(id),
tag_id int references tag(id),
primary key (article_id, tag_id)
);
That way, insertion of a duplicate pair would fail rather than having to resort to if not exists.
This seems to work, although I will, as others have also said, suggest that you add some constraints on the table and then simply "try" to insert.
insert into article_tags
select 2, 7
where not exists ( select *
from article_tags
where article_id = 2
and tag_id = 7 )

SQLite Schema Information Metadata

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();
}
}

INSERT IF NOT EXISTS ELSE UPDATE?

I've found a few "would be" solutions for the classic "How do I insert a new record or update one if it already exists" but I cannot get any of them to work in SQLite.
I have a table defined as follows:
CREATE TABLE Book
ID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
Name VARCHAR(60) UNIQUE,
TypeID INTEGER,
Level INTEGER,
Seen INTEGER
What I want to do is add a record with a unique Name. If the Name already exists, I want to modify the fields.
Can somebody tell me how to do this please?
Have a look at http://sqlite.org/lang_conflict.html.
You want something like:
insert or replace into Book (ID, Name, TypeID, Level, Seen) values
((select ID from Book where Name = "SearchName"), "SearchName", ...);
Note that any field not in the insert list will be set to NULL if the row already exists in the table. This is why there's a subselect for the ID column: In the replacement case the statement would set it to NULL and then a fresh ID would be allocated.
This approach can also be used if you want to leave particular field values alone if the row in the replacement case but set the field to NULL in the insert case.
For example, assuming you want to leave Seen alone:
insert or replace into Book (ID, Name, TypeID, Level, Seen) values (
(select ID from Book where Name = "SearchName"),
"SearchName",
5,
6,
(select Seen from Book where Name = "SearchName"));
You should use the INSERT OR IGNORE command followed by an UPDATE command:
In the following example name is a primary key:
INSERT OR IGNORE INTO my_table (name, age) VALUES ('Karen', 34)
UPDATE my_table SET age = 34 WHERE name='Karen'
The first command will insert the record. If the record exists, it will ignore the error caused by the conflict with an existing primary key.
The second command will update the record (which now definitely exists)
You need to set a constraint on the table to trigger a "conflict" which you then resolve by doing a replace:
CREATE TABLE data (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, event_id INTEGER, track_id INTEGER, value REAL);
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX data_idx ON data(event_id, track_id);
Then you can issue:
INSERT OR REPLACE INTO data VALUES (NULL, 1, 2, 3);
INSERT OR REPLACE INTO data VALUES (NULL, 2, 2, 3);
INSERT OR REPLACE INTO data VALUES (NULL, 1, 2, 5);
The "SELECT * FROM data" will give you:
2|2|2|3.0
3|1|2|5.0
Note that the data.id is "3" and not "1" because REPLACE does a DELETE and INSERT, not an UPDATE. This also means that you must ensure that you define all necessary columns or you will get unexpected NULL values.
INSERT OR REPLACE will replace the other fields to default value.
sqlite> CREATE TABLE Book (
ID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
Name TEXT,
TypeID INTEGER,
Level INTEGER,
Seen INTEGER
);
sqlite> INSERT INTO Book VALUES (1001, 'C++', 10, 10, 0);
sqlite> SELECT * FROM Book;
1001|C++|10|10|0
sqlite> INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Book(ID, Name) VALUES(1001, 'SQLite');
sqlite> SELECT * FROM Book;
1001|SQLite|||
If you want to preserve the other field
Method 1
sqlite> SELECT * FROM Book;
1001|C++|10|10|0
sqlite> INSERT OR IGNORE INTO Book(ID) VALUES(1001);
sqlite> UPDATE Book SET Name='SQLite' WHERE ID=1001;
sqlite> SELECT * FROM Book;
1001|SQLite|10|10|0
Method 2
Using UPSERT (syntax was added to SQLite with version 3.24.0 (2018-06-04))
INSERT INTO Book (ID, Name)
VALUES (1001, 'SQLite')
ON CONFLICT (ID) DO
UPDATE SET Name=excluded.Name;
The excluded. prefix equal to the value in VALUES ('SQLite').
Firstly update it. If affected row count = 0 then insert it. Its the easiest and suitable for all RDBMS.
Upsert is what you want. UPSERT syntax was added to SQLite with version 3.24.0 (2018-06-04).
CREATE TABLE phonebook2(
name TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
phonenumber TEXT,
validDate DATE
);
INSERT INTO phonebook2(name,phonenumber,validDate)
VALUES('Alice','704-555-1212','2018-05-08')
ON CONFLICT(name) DO UPDATE SET
phonenumber=excluded.phonenumber,
validDate=excluded.validDate
WHERE excluded.validDate>phonebook2.validDate;
Be warned that at this point the actual word "UPSERT" is not part of the upsert syntax.
The correct syntax is
INSERT INTO ... ON CONFLICT(...) DO UPDATE SET...
and if you are doing INSERT INTO SELECT ... your select needs at least WHERE true to solve parser ambiguity about the token ON with the join syntax.
Be warned that INSERT OR REPLACE... will delete the record before inserting a new one if it has to replace, which could be bad if you have foreign key cascades or other delete triggers.
If you have no primary key, You can insert if not exist, then do an update. The table must contain at least one entry before using this.
INSERT INTO Test
(id, name)
SELECT
101 as id,
'Bob' as name
FROM Test
WHERE NOT EXISTS(SELECT * FROM Test WHERE id = 101 and name = 'Bob') LIMIT 1;
Update Test SET id='101' WHERE name='Bob';
I believe you want UPSERT.
"INSERT OR REPLACE" without the additional trickery in that answer will reset any fields you don't specify to NULL or other default value. (This behavior of INSERT OR REPLACE is unlike UPDATE; it's exactly like INSERT, because it actually is INSERT; however if what you wanted is UPDATE-if-exists you probably want the UPDATE semantics and will be unpleasantly surprised by the actual result.)
The trickery from the suggested UPSERT implementation is basically to use INSERT OR REPLACE, but specify all fields, using embedded SELECT clauses to retrieve the current value for fields you don't want to change.
I think it's worth pointing out that there can be some unexpected behaviour here if you don't thoroughly understand how PRIMARY KEY and UNIQUE interact.
As an example, if you want to insert a record only if the NAME field isn't currently taken, and if it is, you want a constraint exception to fire to tell you, then INSERT OR REPLACE will not throw and exception and instead will resolve the UNIQUE constraint itself by replacing the conflicting record (the existing record with the same NAME). Gaspard's demonstrates this really well in his answer above.
If you want a constraint exception to fire, you have to use an INSERT statement, and rely on a separate UPDATE command to update the record once you know the name isn't taken.

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