Convenience Routines For Running Queries

int sqlite3_get_table(
  sqlite3*,             /* An open database */
  const char *sql,      /* SQL to be evaluated */
  char ***pResult,      /* Results of the query */
  int *nrow,            /* Number of result rows written here */
  int *ncolumn,         /* Number of result columns written here */
  char **errmsg         /* Error msg written here */
);
void sqlite3_free_table(char **result);

Definition: A result table is memory data structure created by the sqlite3_get_table() interface. A result table records the complete query results from one or more queries.

The table conceptually has a number of rows and columns. But these numbers are not part of the result table itself. These numbers are obtained separately. Let N be the number of rows and M be the number of columns.

A result table is an array of pointers to zero-terminated UTF-8 strings. There are (N+1)*M elements in the array. The first M pointers point to zero-terminated strings that contain the names of the columns. The remaining entries all point to query results. NULL values are give a NULL pointer. All other values are in their UTF-8 zero-terminated string representation as returned by sqlite3_column_text().

A result table might consists of one or more memory allocations. It is not safe to pass a result table directly to sqlite3_free(). A result table should be deallocated using sqlite3_free_table().

As an example of the result table format, suppose a query result is as follows:

Name        | Age
-----------------------
Alice       | 43
Bob         | 28
Cindy       | 21

There are two column (M==2) and three rows (N==3). Thus the result table has 8 entries. Suppose the result table is stored in an array names azResult. Then azResult holds this content:

azResult[0] = "Name";
azResult[1] = "Age";
azResult[2] = "Alice";
azResult[3] = "43";
azResult[4] = "Bob";
azResult[5] = "28";
azResult[6] = "Cindy";
azResult[7] = "21";

The sqlite3_get_table() function evaluates one or more semicolon-separated SQL statements in the zero-terminated UTF-8 string of its 2nd parameter. It returns a result table to the pointer given in its 3rd parameter.

After the calling function has finished using the result, it should pass the pointer to the result table to sqlite3_free_table() in order to release the memory that was malloc-ed. Because of the way the sqlite3_malloc() happens within sqlite3_get_table(), the calling function must not try to call sqlite3_free() directly. Only sqlite3_free_table() is able to release the memory properly and safely.

The sqlite3_get_table() interface is implemented as a wrapper around sqlite3_exec(). The sqlite3_get_table() routine does not have access to any internal data structures of SQLite. It uses only the public interface defined here. As a consequence, errors that occur in the wrapper layer outside of the internal sqlite3_exec() call are not reflected in subsequent calls to sqlite3_errcode() or sqlite3_errmsg().

Invariants:

See also lists of Objects, Constants, and Functions.