I’ve been working with SQLite for some time, and while it’s a great app (an amazing app), the doco isn’t so great. Here’s a cheat sheet that I’ve put together containing the commands that I frequently need…

Download from:

http://www.sqlite.org/download.html

Getting Started:

http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite.html

Documentation:

http://www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Open/Create a Database

This is done using the command line program.

sqlite3 {database file name}

Eg:

sqlite3 my_stuff_database.db

If the database exists it will be opened, if it doesn’t exist, it will be created (sort of – you’ll need to perform some sort of write operation first)

Print the database structure

.schema

Print database structure and data

.dump

The output will be in the form of a script that will recreate the database if imported

Turn on column names on query results

.explain on

To turn it off do:

.explain off

This will return the output to the default of pipe-separated values with no column header. Use the following command to see the current ‘explain’ status:

.show

Creating Tables

create table {table name} ('{column name}' {data type} primary key, '{column name}' {data type});

Eg:

CREATE TABLE my_things('id' int primary key, 'name' varchar(20), 'description' varchar(50));

Adding a Column to a Table

alter table {table name} ADD '{column name}' {data type};

Eg:

alter table my_things ADD 'description' varchar(50);

Deleting a table

drop table {table name};

Eg:

drop table my_things;

Inserting Data into a Table

insert into {table name} values ({data}, {more data}, '{yet more data}');

Eg:

insert into my_things values (1, 'My first thing', 'It is nice');

Transactions

begin transaction;

{put the relevant queries here}

commit;

Output query results to a file

.output {filename.txt}

After entering the above command, the results of subsequent queries will be written to the specified file

Change the output back to being printed to the console by typing the following:

.output stdout