Basic SQLite Database Manipulation

If you have ever used a database from within a programming language, SQLite database manipulation using C should seem intuitive. You open the database. You create a prepared statement containing a SQL string. That statement might have one or more parameters you bind values to. After binding, you execute the statement. If the statement returns results, you loop through each record and load the record’s column values into your program’s variables. After looping through all records, you finalize the statement, and, if you are finished with the database, you close the database. The steps are similar for most languages and databases.

Opening the Database

You open a database using the sqlite3_open, sqlite_open16, or sqlite3_open_v2 commands. This chapter uses the sqlite3_open command exclusively. The sqlite3_open command takes a database filename as a UTF-8 string and opens the database. Listing 16-1, taken from the SQLite’s online documentation, lists the sqlite_open3 method signature.