sqlite3.Connection

class sqlite3.Connection

A SQLite database connection has the following attributes and methods:

isolation_level

Get or set the current isolation level. None for autocommit mode or one of “DEFERRED”, “IMMEDIATE” or “EXCLUSIVE”. See section Controlling Transactions for a more detailed explanation.

in_transaction

True if a transaction is active (there are uncommitted changes), False otherwise. Read-only attribute.

New in version 3.2.

cursor([cursorClass])

The cursor method accepts a single optional parameter cursorClass. If supplied, this must be a custom cursor class that extends sqlite3.Cursor.

commit()

This method commits the current transaction. If you don’t call this method, anything you did since the last call to commit() is not visible from other database connections. If you wonder why you don’t see the data you’ve written to the database, please check you didn’t forget to call this method.

rollback()

This method rolls back any changes to the database since the last call to commit().

close()

This closes the database connection. Note that this does not automatically call commit(). If you just close your database connection without calling commit() first, your changes will be lost!

execute(sql[, parameters])

This is a nonstandard shortcut that creates a cursor object by calling the cursor() method, calls the cursor’s execute() method with the parameters given, and returns the cursor.

executemany(sql[, parameters])

This is a nonstandard shortcut that creates a cursor object by calling the cursor() method, calls the cursor’s executemany() method with the parameters given, and returns the cursor.

executescript(sql_script)

This is a nonstandard shortcut that creates a cursor object by calling the cursor() method, calls the cursor’s executescript() method with the given sql_script, and returns the cursor.

create_function(name, num_params, func)

Creates a user-defined function that you can later use from within SQL statements under the function name name. num_params is the number of parameters the function accepts (if num_params is -1, the function may take any number of arguments), and func is a Python callable that is called as the SQL function.

The function can return any of the types supported by SQLite: bytes, str, int, float and None.

Example:

import sqlite3
import hashlib

def md5sum(t):
    return hashlib.md5(t).hexdigest()

con = sqlite3.connect(":memory:")
con.create_function("md5", 1, md5sum)
cur = con.cursor()
cur.execute("select md5(?)", (b"foo",))
print(cur.fetchone()[0])

create_aggregate(name, num_params, aggregate_class)

Creates a user-defined aggregate function.

The aggregate class must implement a step method, which accepts the number of parameters num_params (if num_params is -1, the function may take any number of arguments), and a finalize method which will return the final result of the aggregate.

The finalize method can return any of the types supported by SQLite: bytes, str, int, float and None.

Example:

import sqlite3

class MySum:
    def __init__(self):
        self.count = 0

    def step(self, value):
        self.count += value

    def finalize(self):
        return self.count

con = sqlite3.connect(":memory:")
con.create_aggregate("mysum", 1, MySum)
cur = con.cursor()
cur.execute("create table test(i)")
cur.execute("insert into test(i) values (1)")
cur.execute("insert into test(i) values (2)")
cur.execute("select mysum(i) from test")
print(cur.fetchone()[0])

create_collation(name, callable)

Creates a collation with the specified name and callable. The callable will be passed two string arguments. It should return -1 if the first is ordered lower than the second, 0 if they are ordered equal and 1 if the first is ordered higher than the second. Note that this controls sorting (ORDER BY in SQL) so your comparisons don’t affect other SQL operations.

Note that the callable will get its parameters as Python bytestrings, which will normally be encoded in UTF-8.

The following example shows a custom collation that sorts “the wrong way”:

import sqlite3

def collate_reverse(string1, string2):
    if string1 == string2:
        return 0
    elif string1 < string2:
        return 1
    else:
        return -1

con = sqlite3.connect(":memory:")
con.create_collation("reverse", collate_reverse)

cur = con.cursor()
cur.execute("create table test(x)")
cur.executemany("insert into test(x) values (?)", [("a",), ("b",)])
cur.execute("select x from test order by x collate reverse")
for row in cur:
    print(row)
con.close()

To remove a collation, call create_collation with None as callable:

con.create_collation("reverse", None)

interrupt()

You can call this method from a different thread to abort any queries that might be executing on the connection. The query will then abort and the caller will get an exception.

set_authorizer(authorizer_callback)

This routine registers a callback. The callback is invoked for each attempt to access a column of a table in the database. The callback should return SQLITE_OK if access is allowed, SQLITE_DENY if the entire SQL statement should be aborted with an error and SQLITE_IGNORE if the column should be treated as a NULL value. These constants are available in the sqlite3 module.

The first argument to the callback signifies what kind of operation is to be authorized. The second and third argument will be arguments or None depending on the first argument. The 4th argument is the name of the database (“main”, “temp”, etc.) if applicable. The 5th argument is the name of the inner-most trigger or view that is responsible for the access attempt or None if this access attempt is directly from input SQL code.

Please consult the SQLite documentation about the possible values for the first argument and the meaning of the second and third argument depending on the first one. All necessary constants are available in the sqlite3 module.

set_progress_handler(handler, n)

This routine registers a callback. The callback is invoked for every n instructions of the SQLite virtual machine. This is useful if you want to get called from SQLite during long-running operations, for example to update a GUI.

If you want to clear any previously installed progress handler, call the method with None for handler.

set_trace_callback(trace_callback)

Registers trace_callback to be called for each SQL statement that is actually executed by the SQLite backend.

The only argument passed to the callback is the statement (as string) that is being executed. The return value of the callback is ignored. Note that the backend does not only run statements passed to the Cursor.execute() methods. Other sources include the transaction management of the Python module and the execution of triggers defined in the current database.

Passing None as trace_callback will disable the trace callback.

New in version 3.3.

enable_load_extension(enabled)

This routine allows/disallows the SQLite engine to load SQLite extensions from shared libraries. SQLite extensions can define new functions, aggregates or whole new virtual table implementations. One well-known extension is the fulltext-search extension distributed with SQLite.

Loadable extensions are disabled by default. See [1].

New in version 3.2.

import sqlite3

con = sqlite3.connect(":memory:")

# enable extension loading
con.enable_load_extension(True)

# Load the fulltext search extension
con.execute("select load_extension('./fts3.so')")

# alternatively you can load the extension using an API call:
# con.load_extension("./fts3.so")

# disable extension laoding again
con.enable_load_extension(False)

# example from SQLite wiki
con.execute("create virtual table recipe using fts3(name, ingredients)")
con.executescript("""
    insert into recipe (name, ingredients) values ('broccoli stew', 'broccoli peppers cheese tomatoes');
    insert into recipe (name, ingredients) values ('pumpkin stew', 'pumpkin onions garlic celery');
    insert into recipe (name, ingredients) values ('broccoli pie', 'broccoli cheese onions flour');
    insert into recipe (name, ingredients) values ('pumpkin pie', 'pumpkin sugar flour butter');
    """)
for row in con.execute("select rowid, name, ingredients from recipe where name match 'pie'"):
    print(row)

load_extension(path)

This routine loads a SQLite extension from a shared library. You have to enable extension loading with enable_load_extension() before you can use this routine.

Loadable extensions are disabled by default. See [1].

New in version 3.2.

row_factory

You can change this attribute to a callable that accepts the cursor and the original row as a tuple and will return the real result row. This way, you can implement more advanced ways of returning results, such as returning an object that can also access columns by name.

Example:

import sqlite3

def dict_factory(cursor, row):
    d = {}
    for idx, col in enumerate(cursor.description):
        d[col[0]] = row[idx]
    return d

con = sqlite3.connect(":memory:")
con.row_factory = dict_factory
cur = con.cursor()
cur.execute("select 1 as a")
print(cur.fetchone()["a"])

If returning a tuple doesn’t suffice and you want name-based access to columns, you should consider setting row_factory to the highly-optimized sqlite3.Row type. Row provides both index-based and case-insensitive name-based access to columns with almost no memory overhead. It will probably be better than your own custom dictionary-based approach or even a db_row based solution.

text_factory

Using this attribute you can control what objects are returned for the TEXT data type. By default, this attribute is set to str and the sqlite3 module will return Unicode objects for TEXT. If you want to return bytestrings instead, you can set it to bytes.

You can also set it to any other callable that accepts a single bytestring parameter and returns the resulting object.

See the following example code for illustration:

import sqlite3

con = sqlite3.connect(":memory:")
cur = con.cursor()

AUSTRIA = "\xd6sterreich"

# by default, rows are returned as Unicode
cur.execute("select ?", (AUSTRIA,))
row = cur.fetchone()
assert row[0] == AUSTRIA

# but we can make sqlite3 always return bytestrings ...
con.text_factory = bytes
cur.execute("select ?", (AUSTRIA,))
row = cur.fetchone()
assert type(row[0]) is bytes
# the bytestrings will be encoded in UTF-8, unless you stored garbage in the
# database ...
assert row[0] == AUSTRIA.encode("utf-8")

# we can also implement a custom text_factory ...
# here we implement one that appends "foo" to all strings
con.text_factory = lambda x: x.decode("utf-8") + "foo"
cur.execute("select ?", ("bar",))
row = cur.fetchone()
assert row[0] == "barfoo"

total_changes

Returns the total number of database rows that have been modified, inserted, or deleted since the database connection was opened.

iterdump()

Returns an iterator to dump the database in an SQL text format. Useful when saving an in-memory database for later restoration. This function provides the same capabilities as the .dump command in the sqlite3 shell.

Example:

# Convert file existing_db.db to SQL dump file dump.sql
import sqlite3

con = sqlite3.connect('existing_db.db')
with open('dump.sql', 'w') as f:
    for line in con.iterdump():
        f.write('%s\n' % line)