Home/ Questions/Q 208683
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-11T17:50:52+00:00

I am trying to get the rowcount of a sqlite3 cursor in my Python3k

  • 0

I am trying to get the rowcount of a sqlite3 cursor in my Python3k program, but I am puzzled, as the rowcount is always -1, despite what Python3 docs say (actually it is contradictory, it should be None). Even after fetching all the rows, rowcount stays at -1. Is it a sqlite3 bug? I have already checked if there are rows in the table.

I can get around this checking if a fetchone() returns something different than None, but I thought this issue would be nice to discuss.

Thanks.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    From the documentation:

    As required by the Python DB API Spec,
    the rowcount attribute “is -1 in case
    no executeXX() has been performed on
    the cursor or the rowcount of the last
    operation is not determinable by the
    interface”.

    This includes SELECT statements
    because we cannot determine the number
    of rows a query produced until all
    rows were fetched.

    That means all SELECT statements won’t have a rowcount. The behaviour you’re observing is documented.

    EDIT: Documentation doesn’t say anywhere that rowcount will be updated after you do a fetchall() so it is just wrong to assume that.

    • 0