sqlite-utils/docs/cli.rst

.. _python_api:

================================
 sqlite-utils command-line tool
================================

The ``sqlite-utils`` command-line tool can be used to manipulate SQLite databases in a number of different ways.

Listing tables
==============

You can list the names of tables in a database using the ``table_names`` subcommand::

    $ sqlite-utils table_names mydb.db
    dogs
    cats
    chickens

If you just want to see the FTS4 tables, you can use ``--fts4`` (or ``--fts5`` for FTS5 tables)::

    $ sqlite-utils table_names --fts4 docs.db
    docs_fts

Inserting data
==============

If you have data as JSON, you can use ``sqlite-utils insert tablename`` to insert it into a database. The table will be created with the correct (automatically detected) columns if it does not already exist.

You can pass in a single JSON object or a list of JSON objects, either as a filename or piped directly to standard-in.

Here's the simplest possible example::

    $ echo '{"name": "Cleo", "age": 4}' | sqlite-utils insert dogs.db dogs -

To specify a column as the primary key, use ``--pk=column_name``.

If you feed it a JSON list it will insert multiple records. For example, if ``dogs.json`` looks like this::

    [
        {
            "id": 1,
            "name": "Cleo",
            "age": 4
        },
        {
            "id": 2,
            "name": "Pancakes",
            "age": 2
        },
        {
            "id": 3,
            "name": "Toby",
            "age": 6
        }
    ]

You can import all three records into an automatically created ``dogs`` table and set the ``id`` column as the primary key like so::

    $ sqlite-utils insert dogs.db dogs.json --pk=id

Vacuum
======

You can run VACUUM to optimize your database like so::

    $ sqlite-utils vacuum mydb.db

Optimize
========

The optimize command can dramatically reduce the size of your database if you are using SQLite full-text search. It runs OPTIMIZE against all of our FTS4 and FTS5 tables, then runs VACUUM.

If you just want to run OPTIMIZE without the VACUUM, use the ``--no-vacuum`` flag.

::

    # Optimize all FTS tables and then VACUUM
    $ sqlite-utils optimize mydb.db

    # Optimize but skip the VACUUM
    $ sqlite-utils optimize --no-vacuum mydb.db