What is the android_metadata table? - android

I try to integrate an existing database file into my Android project.
I follow the instructions on this blog. They write that I have to add a table android_metadata with a column called locale and put en_US into it.
I try to figure out what this table is used for. Because my database content is german. Maybe i then should not put en_US into it? Is this required for localisation of the database content or is the table not needed at all?

the metadata table will be generated automatically. if you have content of german try updating the metadata table 'de_DE'.

If you're okay opening the DB with read-write access then you can let the openDatabase(...) call automatically generate it. For example in Android:
SQLiteDatabase.openDatabase(m_szMainDBPath, null, SQLiteDatabase.OPEN_READWRITE);

The metadata table is required to hold (as its name suggests) meta information about the application. This table is auto-generated in some cases (since api 4 if i remember correctly) but you may want to add it yourself.

Related

Sqlite Dropping Column from table

Why sqlite database has the limitation of "not to drop a column from a table"
in a single command?
Are there any chances it would be added in future versions?
ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN is now supported, as of 3.35.0 which was released 2021-03-12.
SQLite supports a limited subset of ALTER TABLE. The ALTER TABLE
command in SQLite allows the user to rename a table or to add a new
column to an existing table. It is not possible to rename a column,
remove a column, or add or remove constraints from a table.
https://sqlite.org/lang_altertable.html
No, you can't.
Are there any chances it would be added in future versions?
Well, we can't tell you that. And even if they will add it, there are still a lot of Android devices out there which have an older version of SQLite without that feature.
However, you can delete a column like this from this answer:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/5987838/5457878
The ALTER TABLE statement supports exactly those operations that can be implemented easily without having to rewrite the entire table. (When adding a new column, that value is missing in all rows; it gets replaced with the column's default value when read.)
The ability to drop columns (or other things, like reordering columns) would add lots of complex code to the SQLite library.
However, SQLite is designed as an embedded database, so it must take care to conserve resources. It is very unlikely that such a large amount of code will ever be added.
http://www.sqlite.org/faq.html#q11
SQLite has limited ALTER TABLE support that you can use to add a column to the end of a table or to change the name of a table. If you want to make more complex changes in the structure of a table, you will have to recreate the table. You can save existing data to a temporary table, drop the old table, create the new table, then copy the data back in from the temporary table.
So you can't just delete the column

I would like to create a database containing 600 text files for an android Application

I have 600+ text files. How do I put them in a database, with mySQL lite.
I want to have 3 columns: index(1 to 600), title and content.
How do I do that? Thanks.
http://www.sqlite.org/datatype3.html
When you create the database (the single table in it), the index should be auto-generated when the entry is created in the table (if you properly created the table with auto indexing)
I would use TEXT (varchar) for the title & blob for the actual text file (the data in it).
The previous answer seems to put you on the right track, though I'm not sure I quite understand how you intend to actually populate the table with the data.
Use content provider for android below is nice link.
http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/AndroidSQLite/article.html.
For datatype to use integer,text,text as columns, below is
datatype link of sqlite.
http://www.sqlite.org/datatype3.html
But Instead of storing the file data in sqlite, I would suggest you to store sdcard path of files in sqlite table and retreive from sdcard when required.
In above case columns will be index,title,filepath.

Changing a Column type in my Android App's Database

I have an app published in the play store.
The app uses a database which holds a table which has a column of type int.
I'm doing a new change where I need to change the column type to long.
How do I go about handling it in the DatabaseHandler I'v created.
I want to preserve the data stored in the older apps database, so what should ideally be the code in the onUpgrade() function???
You don't need to change the database column type. An INTEGER column will happily contain all the bits needed to represent a Java long.
In fact, there's no long column type in sqlite.
I think using SQLite, the best way is to create a temporary table, copy all your table content, drop the old table and recreate the table with the right type on your column, then you can just copy the content from the temporary table and drop it...
I know this don't fell like the best approach, but I don't think SQLite have some alter table function.
As far I know you can t do this . But You can drop your table if it exists and create it again . Maybe you can find out some useful information here SQLite Modify Column or here Modify a Column's Type in sqlite3

How can load some value in the sqlite-database

I have a database now i have to check whether it is empty or not. if empty i have to write the code for insert values otherwise i have to update the values of the fields.
please help me..
You can try something like this:
// Open or crare
myDB = this.openOrCreateDatabase("MyDatabaseName", MODE_PRIVATE, null);
//Check if exists (if not create the table)
myDB.execSQL("CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS MyTableName (Name1 VARCHAR, Name2 VARCHAR);");
//Insert or update your lines
myDB.execSQL("INSERT INTO MyTableName (Name1 , Name2 ) VALUES ('XXX', 'YYY');");
Have you done the Google Notepad tutorials 1,2,3? they have a bunch of database help
Hope that can help
It's possible to include a .db file in your application package and use that as the starting point for your device-side database. It goes in the assets folder. You'll have to manually copy the values out of that .db into the one on the device in your startup method, but it saves putting a bunch of SQL INSERT calls in code.
The MOTODEV Studio Database perspective will assist you with this. You can use it to create a .db from scratch and populate it with your default values. Then, there is a wizard that will set up a content provider and accessor classes for the fields if you need them.
Disclaimer: I'm the product manager for MOTODEV Studio.

How to access an existing sqlite database in Android?

So far we have developed apps in android that create database on runtime. We like to know how can we access a pre-built or existing database/sqlite file in our android app? Please provide detail
Take a look at the documentation for android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.
In particular, there's an openDatabase() command that will access a database given a file path.
SQLiteDatabase db = SQLiteDatabase.openDatabase(path, null, 0);
Just specify the path to your database as the path variable, and it should work.
I have followed the same road and found two issues:
Include the _id field on any table you create and make sure it is
part of the columns to return when you query any table.
You may run into an error like Failed to open the database. closing
it.. This is because we are copying the database from an existing
file instead of creating tables on top of a db created by the sqlite
android API and the table android_metadata may not exist. For
creating it just run the following query on your db:
CREATE TABLE android_metadata (locale TEXT);
And add the corresponding locale, for example en_US
First copy your SDCARD and give it's path in the variable "DBNAME" in the following example.
it will be something like "/sdcard/persons.db" if you are directly pulling it to sdcard.
Use this for accessing database in application :
Context context = getApplicationContext();
context.getDatabasePath(DataBaseHelper.database_Name);

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