Question

I am looking to retrieve a list of columns in a table. The database is the latest release of SQLite (3.6, I believe). I am looking for code that does this with a SQL query. Extra bonus points for metadata related to the columns (e.g. length, data type, etc…)

Answer 1

What you’re looking for is called the data dictionary. In sqlite a list of all tables can be found by querying sqlite_master table (or view?)

sqlite> create table people (first_name varchar, last_name varchar, email_address varchar); sqlite> select * from sqlite_master; table|people|people|2|CREATE TABLE people (first_name varchar, last_name varchar, email_address varchar) 

To get column information you can use the pragma table_info(table_name) statement:

sqlite> pragma table_info(people); 0|first_name|varchar|0||0 1|last_name|varchar|0||0 2|email_address|varchar|0||0 

For more information on the pragma statements, see the documentation.