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Asked: 2026-05-26T06:47:01+00:00

I have a SQlite3 table that has typeless columns like in this example: CREATE

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I have a SQlite3 table that has typeless columns like in this example:

CREATE TABLE foo(
  Timestamp INT NOT NULL,
  SensorID,
  Value,
  PRIMARY KEY(Timestamp, SensorID)
);

I have specific reasons not to declare the type of the columns SensorID and Value.
When inserting rows with numeric SensorID and Value columns I notice that they are being written as plain text into the .db file.

When I change the CREATE TABLE statement to…

CREATE TABLE foo(
  Timestamp INT NOT NULL,
  SensorID INT,
  Value REAL,
  PRIMARY KEY(Timestamp, SensorID)
);

…then the values seem to be written in some binary format to the .db file.

Since I need to write several millions of rows to the database, I have concerns about the file size this data produces and so would like to avoid value storage in plain text form.

Can I force SQLite to use binary representation in it’s database file without using explicitly typed columns?

Note: Rows are currently written with PHP::PDO using prepared statements.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The example in section 3.4 in the sqlite docs about types demonstrates the insertion of a number as int in a column without an explicit declaration of type. I guess the trick is leaving out the quotes around the number, which would convert it to a string (which, in the case of typed columns, would be coerced back into a number).

    Section 2 in the page linked above also provides a lot of info about the type conversions taking place.

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