Question

I have a sqlite database in my application. My application shouldn’t ship this as an empty database but certain records need to be created before the user can use the application the first time. Of course I can have many insert statements, but that seems to be very strange. I thought of something like http://vineetyadav.com/tutorials/11-adding-prefilled-sqlite-database-to-android-app.html which basically works, but that means that my manually created DB needs all internal tables like android_metadata as well. So I either need to know what internal tables exist and how to fill them. Or another smart way of having a pre-filled database. Any suggestions?

Thanks, A.

Answer 1

You could read in a flat file from the SD card with 1 insert statement per line and iterate through that file.

Here’s a similar example in which I read a file and add a ContactItem to my contact_list:

public ArrayList<ContactItem> readInputFile(Context context, String filename) {
    String text = null;
    BufferedReader reader = null;
    ArrayList<ContactItem> contact_list = new ArrayList<ContactItem>();
    contact_list.clear();  // Clear any existing contacts when a new file is read
    try {
        reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(filename));
        // Repeat until EOF
        while (((text = reader.readLine()) != null)) {
            if (!(text.length() > 1024)) {  //  If we read more than 1k per line there's a problem with the input file format
                ContactItem c = new ContactItem(text);
                if (c.getIsValid()) {
                    //  We were able to parse a well formed phone number from the last line read
                    contact_list.add(c);
                }
            }
        }
    } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
        Toast.makeText(context, R.string.error_fileNotFound, 1).show();
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IOException e) {
        Toast.makeText(context, R.string.error_ioException, 1).show();
        e.printStackTrace();
    } finally { // EOFException (or other, but EOF is handled and most likely)
        try {
            if (reader != null) {
                reader.close();
            }
        } catch (IOException e) {
            Toast.makeText(context, R.string.error_generalFailure, 1).show();
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
    return contact_list;
}