Question

I have this small ruby script that collects data and then save them in a hash and then stores them in a sqlite db.

The hash looks like this:

@track = {:name => "Chris Brown", :song => "Sweet Love", :time => "3:20", :album => "Fortune" }

And I have a method that save this hash into a sqlite database:

def add_db
 db  = SQLite3::Database.new("playlist.sqlite")
 sql = "INSERT INTO tracks (name, song, time, album)" +
           "VALUES(#{@track[:name]}, #{@track[:song]},#{@track[:time]}, #{@track[:album]})"
 db.execute(sql)
 db.close
end

But I get this error: initialize': near "Playlist": syntax error (SQLite3::SQLException)

Is this the rigth way to save hash values into a sqlite3?

Answer 1

Your problem is that you’re not quoting anything that you’re inserting so SQLite ends up seeing things like this:

insert into tracks (name, song, time, album) values (Playlist, ...)

and that’s not valid SQL. You should use placeholders:

db.execute(
    'insert into tracks (name, song, time, album) values (?, ?, ?, ?)',
    @track[:name], @track[:song], @track[:time], @track[:album]
)

You can also use ActiveRecord but somethings that’s too heavy for a simple data importing script.