sqlite-utils

Python CLI utility and library for manipulating SQLite databases.

Some feature highlights

• Pipe JSON (or CSV or TSV) directly into a new SQLite database file, automatically creating a table with the appropriate schema
• Run in-memory SQL queries, including joins, directly against data in CSV, TSV or JSON files and view the results
• Configure SQLite full-text search against your database tables and run search queries against them, ordered by relevance
• Run transformations against your tables to make schema changes that SQLite ALTER TABLE does not directly support, such as changing the type of a column
• Extract columns into separate tables to better normalize your existing data
• Install plugins to add custom SQL functions and additional features

Read more on my blog, in this series of posts on New features in sqlite-utils and other entries tagged sqliteutils.

Installation

pip install sqlite-utils

Or if you use Homebrew for macOS:

brew install sqlite-utils

Using as a CLI tool

Now you can do things with the CLI utility like this:

$ sqlite-utils memory dogs.csv "select * from t"
[{"id": 1, "age": 4, "name": "Cleo"},
 {"id": 2, "age": 2, "name": "Pancakes"}]
$ sqlite-utils insert dogs.db dogs dogs.csv --csv
[####################################]  100%
$ sqlite-utils tables dogs.db --counts
[{"table": "dogs", "count": 2}]
$ sqlite-utils dogs.db "select id, name from dogs"
[{"id": 1, "name": "Cleo"},
 {"id": 2, "name": "Pancakes"}]
$ sqlite-utils dogs.db "select * from dogs" --csv
id,age,name
1,4,Cleo
2,2,Pancakes
$ sqlite-utils dogs.db "select * from dogs" --table
  id    age  name
----  -----  --------
   1      4  Cleo
   2      2  Pancakes

You can import JSON data into a new database table like this:

$ curl https://api.github.com/repos/simonw/sqlite-utils/releases \
    | sqlite-utils insert releases.db releases - --pk id

Or for data in a CSV file:

$ sqlite-utils insert dogs.db dogs dogs.csv --csv

sqlite-utils memory lets you import CSV or JSON data into an in-memory database and run SQL queries against it in a single command:

$ cat dogs.csv | sqlite-utils memory - "select name, age from stdin"

See the full CLI documentation for comprehensive coverage of many more commands.

Using as a library

You can also import sqlite_utils and use it as a Python library like this:

import sqlite_utils
db = sqlite_utils.Database("demo_database.db")
# This line creates a "dogs" table if one does not already exist:
db["dogs"].insert_all([
    {"id": 1, "age": 4, "name": "Cleo"},
    {"id": 2, "age": 2, "name": "Pancakes"}
], pk="id")

Check out the full library documentation for everything else you can do with the Python library.

Related projects

• Datasette: A tool for exploring and publishing data
• csvs-to-sqlite: Convert CSV files into a SQLite database
• db-to-sqlite: CLI tool for exporting a MySQL or PostgreSQL database as a SQLite file
• dogsheep: A family of tools for personal analytics, built on top of sqlite-utils