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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-25T16:38:47+00:00

I have a simple sqlite3 table that looks like this: Table: Part Part SuperPart

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I have a simple sqlite3 table that looks like this:

Table: Part
Part    SuperPart
wk0Z    wk00
wk06    wk02
wk07    wk02
eZ01    eZ00
eZ02    eZ00
eZ03    eZ01
eZ04    eZ01

I need to run a recursive query to find all the pairs of a given SuperPart with all of its subParts.
So let’s say that I have eZ00. eZ00 is a superpart of eZ01 and eZ01 is a superpart of eZ03. The result must include not only the pairs (eZ00, eZ01) and (eZ01 and eZ03) but must also include the pair (eZ00, eZ03).

I know there are other ways of defining the table, but I have no choice here.
I know i can use several unions if I know the depth of my tree, but I won’t allways know how depth I want to go.
It’d help to have something like WITH RECURSIVE or even just WITH (,,) AS x but for what I’ve searched, that’s not possible in sqlite, right?

Is there a way to do this recursive query in sqlite3?

UPDATE:

When this question was made, SQLite didn’t support recursive queries, but as stated by @lunicon, SQLite now supports recursive CTE since 3.8.3 sqlite.org/lang_with.html

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you’re lucky enough to be using SQLite 3.8.3 or higher then you do have access to recursive and non-recursive CTEs using WITH:

    enter image description here

    Thanks to lunicon for letting us know about this SQLite update.

    In versions prior to 3.8.3, SQLite didn’t support recursive CTEs (or CTEs at all for that matter) so there was no WITH in SQLite. Since you don’t know how deep it goes, you can’t use the standard JOIN trick to fake the recursive CTE. You have to do it the hard way and implement the recursion in your client code:

    • Grab the initial row and the sub-part IDs.
    • Grab the rows and sub-part IDs for the sub-parts.
    • Repeat until nothing comes back.
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