sqlite-utils

This release introduces a new mechanism for speeding up count(*) queries using cached table counts, stored in a _counts table and updated by triggers. This mechanism is described in Cached table counts using triggers, and can be enabled using Python API methods or the new enable-counts CLI command. (#212)

• table.enable_counts() method for enabling these triggers on a specific table.
• db.enable_counts() method for enabling triggers on every table in the database. (#213)
• New sqlite-utils enable-counts my.db command for enabling counts on all or specific tables, see Enabling cached counts. (#214)
• New sqlite-utils triggers command for listing the triggers defined for a database or specific tables, see Listing triggers. (#218)
• New db.use_counts_table property which, if True, causes table.count to read from the _counts table. (#215)
• table.has_counts_triggers property revealing if a table has been configured with the new _counts database triggers.
• db.reset_counts() method and sqlite-utils reset-counts command for resetting the values in the _counts table. (#219)
• The previously undocumented db.escape() method has been renamed to db.quote() and is now covered by the documentation: Quoting strings for use in SQL. (#217)
• New table.triggers_dict and db.triggers_dict introspection properties. (#211, #216)
• sqlite-utils insert now shows a more useful error message for invalid JSON. (#206)

• Fixed failing test caused by optimize sometimes creating larger database files. (#209)
• Documentation now lives on https://sqlite-utils.datasette.io/
• README now includes brew install sqlite-utils installation method.

• New command: sqlite-utils analyze-tables my.db outputs useful information about the table columns in the database, such as the number of distinct values and how many rows are null. See Analyzing tables for documentation. (#207)
• New table.analyze_column(column) Python method used by the analyze-tables command - see Analyzing a column.
• The table.update() method now correctly handles values that should be stored as JSON. Thanks, Andreas Madsack. (#204)

This release introduces a new sqlite-utils search command for searching tables, see Executing searches. (#192)

The table.search() method has been redesigned, see Searching with table.search(). (#197)

The release includes minor backwards-incompatible changes, hence the version bump to 3.0. Those changes, which should not affect most users, are:

• The -c shortcut option for outputting CSV is no longer available. The full --csv option is required instead.
• The -f shortcut for --fmt has also been removed - use --fmt.
• The table.search() method now defaults to sorting by relevance, not sorting by rowid. (#198)
• The table.search() method now returns a generator over a list of Python dictionaries. It previously returned a list of tuples.

Also in this release:

• The query, tables, rows and search CLI commands now accept a new --tsv option which outputs the results in TSV. (#193)
• A new table.virtual_table_using property reveals if a table is a virtual table, and returns the upper case type of virtual table (e.g. FTS4 or FTS5) if it is. It returns None if the table is not a virtual table. (#196)
• The new table.search_sql() method returns the SQL for searching a table, see Building SQL queries with table.search_sql().
• sqlite-utils rows now accepts multiple optional -c parameters specifying the columns to return. (#200)

Changes since the 3.0a0 alpha release:

• The sqlite-utils search command now defaults to returning every result, unless you add a --limit 20 option.
• The sqlite-utils search -c and table.search(columns=[]) options are now fully respected. (#201)

This release introduces a new sqlite-utils search command for searching tables, see Executing searches. (#192)

The table.search() method has been redesigned, see Searching with table.search(). (#197)

The release includes minor backwards-incompatible changes, hence the version bump to 3.0. Those changes, which should not affect most users, are:

• The -c shortcut option for outputting CSV is no longer available. The full --csv option is required instead.
• The -f shortcut for --fmt has also been removed - use --fmt.
• The table.search() method now defaults to sorting by relevance, not sorting by rowid. (#198)
• The table.search() method now returns a generator over a list of Python dictionaries. It previously returned a list of tuples.

Also in this release:

• The query, tables, rows and search CLI commands now accept a new --tsv option which outputs the results in TSV. (#193)
• A new table.virtual_table_using property reveals if a table is a virtual table, and returns the upper case type of virtual table (e.g. FTS4 or FTS5) if it is. It returns None if the table is not a virtual table. (#196)
• The new table.search_sql() method returns the SQL for searching a table, see Building SQL queries with table.search_sql().
• sqlite-utils rows now accepts multiple optional -c parameters specifying the columns to return. (#200)

• table.m2m(other_table, records) method now takes any iterable, not just a list or tuple. Thanks, Adam Wolf. (#189)
• sqlite-utils insert now displays a progress bar for CSV or TSV imports. (#173)
• New @db.register_function(deterministic=True) option for registering deterministic SQLite functions in Python 3.8 or higher. (#191)

• New --encoding option for processing CSV and TSV files that use a non-utf-8 encoding, for both the insert and update commands. (#182)
• The --load-extension option is now available to many more commands. (#137)
• --load-extension=spatialite can be used to load SpatiaLite from common installation locations, if it is available. (#136)
• Tests now also run against Python 3.9. (#184)
• Passing pk=["id"] now has the same effect as passing pk="id". (#181)

• table.extract() and sqlite-utils extract now apply much, much faster - one example operation reduced from twelve minutes to just four seconds! (#172)
• sqlite-utils extract no longer shows a progress bar, because it's fast enough not to need one.
• New column_order= option for table.transform() which can be used to alter the order of columns in a table. (#175)
• sqlite-utils transform --column-order= option (with a -o shortcut) for changing column order. (#176)
• The table.transform(drop_foreign_keys=) parameter and the sqlite-utils transform --drop-foreign-key option have changed. They now accept just the name of the column rather than requiring all three of the column, other table and other column. This is technically a backwards-incompatible change but I chose not to bump the major version number because the transform feature is so new. (#177)
• The table .disable_fts(), .rebuild_fts(), .delete(), .delete_where() and .add_missing_columns() methods all now return self, which means they can be chained together with other table operations.

This release introduces two key new capabilities: transform (#114) and extract (#42).

Transform

SQLite's ALTER TABLE has several documented limitations. The table.transform() Python method and sqlite-utils transform CLI command work around these limitations using a pattern where a new table with the desired structure is created, data is copied over to it and the old table is then dropped and replaced by the new one.

You can use these tools to drop columns, change column types, rename columns, add and remove NOT NULL and defaults, remove foreign key constraints and more. See the transforming tables (CLI) and transforming tables (Python library) documentation for full details of how to use them.

Extract

Sometimes a database table - especially one imported from a CSV file - will contain duplicate data. A Trees table may include a Species column with only a few dozen unique values, when the table itself contains thousands of rows.

The table.extract() method and sqlite-utils extract commands can extract a column - or multiple columns - out into a separate lookup table, and set up a foreign key relationship from the original table.

The Python library extract() documentation describes how extraction works in detail, and Extracting columns into a separate table in the CLI documentation includes a detailed example.

Other changes

• The @db.register_function decorator can be used to quickly register Python functions as custom SQL functions, see Registering custom SQL functions. (#162)
• The table.rows_where() method now accepts an optional select= argument for specifying which columns should be selected, see Listing rows.

• New sqlite-utils add-foreign-keys command for Adding multiple foreign keys at once. (#157)
• New table.enable_fts(..., replace=True) argument for replacing an existing FTS table with a new configuration. (#160)
• New table.add_foreign_key(..., ignore=True) argument for ignoring a foreign key if it already exists. (#112)

• table.rebuild_fts() method for rebuilding a FTS index, see Rebuilding a full-text search table. (#155)
• sqlite-utils rebuild-fts data.db command for rebuilding FTS indexes across all tables, or just specific tables. (#155)
• table.optimize() method no longer deletes junk rows from the *_fts_docsize table. This was added in 2.17 but it turns out running table.rebuild_fts() is a better solution to this problem.
• Fixed a bug where rows with additional columns that are inserted after the first batch of records could cause an error due to breaking SQLite's maximum number of parameters. Thanks, Simon Wiles. (#145)

This release handles a bug where replacing rows in FTS tables could result in growing numbers of unneccessary rows in the associated *_fts_docsize table. (#149)

• PRAGMA recursive_triggers=on by default for all connections. You can turn it off with Database(recursive_triggers=False). (#152)
• table.optimize() method now deletes unnecessary rows from the *_fts_docsize table. (#153)
• New tracer method for tracking underlying SQL queries, see Tracing queries. (#150)
• Neater indentation for schema SQL. (#148)
• Documentation for sqlite_utils.AlterError exception thrown by in add_foreign_keys().

• insert_all(..., alter=True) now works for columns introduced after the first 100 records. Thanks, Simon Wiles! (#139)
• Continuous Integration is now powered by GitHub Actions. (#143)

• --load-extension option for sqlite-utils query for loading SQLite extensions. (#134)
• New sqlite_utils.utils.find_spatialite() function for finding SpatiaLite in common locations. (#135)

• Now available as a sdist package on PyPI in addition to a wheel. (#133)

• New db.enable_wal() and db.disable_wal() methods for enabling and disabling Write-Ahead Logging for a database file - see WAL mode in the Python API documentation.
• Also sqlite-utils enable-wal file.db and sqlite-utils disable-wal file.db commands for doing the same thing on the command-line, see WAL mode (CLI). (#132)

Documentation improvements.

• The insert-files command can now read from standard input: cat dog.jpg | sqlite-utils insert-files dogs.db pics - --name=dog.jpg. (#127)
• You can now specify a full-text search tokenizer using the new tokenize= parameter to enable_fts(). This means you can enable Porter stemming on a table by running db["articles"].enable_fts(["headline", "body"], tokenize="porter"). (#130)
• You can also set a custom tokenizer using the sqlite-utils enable-fts CLI command, via the new --tokenize option.

• memoryview and uuid.UUID objects are now supported. memoryview objects will be stored using BLOB and uuid.UUID objects will be stored using TEXT. (#128)

The theme of this release is better tools for working with binary data. The new insert-files command can be used to insert binary files directly into a database table, and other commands have been improved with better support for BLOB columns.

• sqlite-utils insert-files my.db gifs *.gif can now insert the contents of files into a specified table. The columns in the table can be customized to include different pieces of metadata derived from the files. See Inserting binary data from files. (#122)
• --raw option to sqlite-utils query - for outputting just a single raw column value - see Returning raw data from a query, such as binary content. (#123)
• JSON output now encodes BLOB values as special base64 obects - see Running queries and returning JSON. (#125)
• The same format of JSON base64 objects can now be used to insert binary data - see Inserting JSON data. (#126)
• The sqlite-utils query command can now accept named parameters, e.g. sqlite-utils :memory: "select :num * :num2" -p num 5 -p num2 6 - see Running queries and returning JSON. (#124)

• New --truncate option to sqlite-utils insert, and truncate=True argument to .insert_all(). Thanks, Thomas Sibley. (#118)
• The sqlite-utils query command now runs updates in a transaction. Thanks, Thomas Sibley. (#120)

• Added documentation for the table.pks introspection property. #116

• The sqlite-utils command now supports UPDATE/INSERT/DELETE in addition to SELECT. #115

• Added custom project links to the PyPI listing.

• New sqlite-utils drop-table command, see Dropping tables. (#111)
• New sqlite-utils drop-view command, see Dropping views.
• Python decimal.Decimal objects are now stored as FLOAT. (#110)

• New sqlite-utils create-table command, see Creating tables. (#27)
• New sqlite-utils create-view command, see Creating views. (#107)

• db.create_view(...) now has additional parameters ignore=True or replace=True, see Creating views. (#106)

• New sqlite-utils views my.db command for listing views in a database, see Listing views. (#105)
• sqlite-utils tables (and views) has a new --schema option which outputs the table/view schema, see Listing tables. (#104)
• Nested structures containing invalid JSON values (e.g. Python bytestrings) are now serialized using repr() instead of throwing an error. (#102)

• New columns= argument for the .insert(), .insert_all(), .upsert() and .upsert_all() methods, for over-riding the auto-detected types for columns and specifying additional columns that should be added when the table is created. See Custom column order and column types. (#100)

• New table.rows_where(..., order_by="age desc") argument, see Listing rows. (#76)

• Panda’s Timestamp is now stored as a SQLite TEXT column. Thanks, b0b5h4rp13! (#96)
• table.last_pk is now only available for inserts or upserts of a single record. (#98)
• New Database(filepath, recreate=True) parameter for deleting and recreating the database. (#97)

• Fixed bug where columns with only null values were not correctly created. (#95)

• Column type suggestion code is no longer confused by null values. (#94)

• table.column_dicts now works with all column types - previously it would throw errors on types other than TEXT, BLOB, INTEGER or FLOAT. (#92)
• Documentation for NotFoundError thrown by table.get(pk) - see Retrieving a specific record.

• table.enable_fts() now works with columns that contain spaces. (#90)

• table.disable_fts() can now be used to remove FTS tables and triggers that were created using table.enable_fts(...). (#88)
• The sqlite-utils disable-fts command can be used to remove FTS tables and triggers from the command-line. (#88)
• Trying to create table columns with square braces ([ or ]) in the name now raises an error. (#86)
• Subclasses of dict, list and tuple are now detected as needing a JSON column. (#87)

table.create_index() now works for columns that contain spaces. (#85)

table.exists() is now a method, not a property. This was not a documented part of the API before so I’m considering this a non-breaking change. (#83)

Fixed a bug where .upsert(..., hash_id="pk") threw an error (#84).

New feature: sqlite_utils.suggest_column_types([records]) returns the suggested column types for a list of records. See Suggesting column types. (#81).

This replaces the undocumented table.detect_column_types() method.

New feature: conversions={...} can be passed to the .insert() family of functions to specify SQL conversions that should be applied to values that are being inserted or updated. See Converting column values using SQL functions. (#77).

The .upsert() and .upsert_all() methods now raise a sqlite_utils.db.PrimaryKeyRequired exception if you call them without specifying the primary key column using pk= (#73).

This release changes the behaviour of upsert. It’s a breaking change, hence 2.0.

The upsert command-line utility and the .upsert() and .upsert_all() Python API methods have had their behaviour altered. They used to completely replace the affected records: now, they update the specified values on existing records but leave other columns unaffected.

See Upserting data using the Python API and Upserting data using the CLI for full details.

If you want the old behaviour - where records were completely replaced - you can use $ sqlite-utils insert ... --replace on the command-line and .insert(..., replace=True) and .insert_all(..., replace=True) in the Python API. See Insert-replacing data using the Python API and Insert-replacing data using the CLI for more.

For full background on this change, see issue #66.

https://sqlite-utils.readthedocs.io/en/latest/changelog.html#v1-12-1

https://sqlite-utils.readthedocs.io/en/latest/changelog.html#v1-12

https://sqlite-utils.readthedocs.io/en/stable/changelog.html#v1-11

https://sqlite-utils.readthedocs.io/en/stable/changelog.html#v1-10

https://sqlite-utils.readthedocs.io/en/stable/changelog.html#v1-9

https://sqlite-utils.readthedocs.io/en/stable/changelog.html#v1-8

https://sqlite-utils.readthedocs.io/en/latest/changelog.html#v1-7-1

https://sqlite-utils.readthedocs.io/en/latest/changelog.html#v1-7

• sqlite-utils insert can now accept TSV data via the new --tsv option (#41)

Support for compound primary keys ( #36 )

Configure these using the CLI tool by passing --pk multiple times

In Python, pass a tuple of columns to the pk=(..., ...) argument: Compound primary keys

New table.get() method for retrieving a record by its primary key: Retrieving a specific record ( #39 )

Assorted minor documentation fixes: changes since 1.4

Added sqlite-utils index-foreign-keys command ( docs ) and db.index_foreign_keys() method ( docs ) ( #33 )

https://sqlite-utils.readthedocs.io/en/latest/changelog.html#v1-3

https://sqlite-utils.readthedocs.io/en/latest/changelog.html#v1-2-2

https://sqlite-utils.readthedocs.io/en/latest/changelog.html#v1-2-1