Question

I’m currently doing some debugging and I was wondering is it possible to display the contents of the phones SQLite database via the SDK? I know it’s possible to do this via queries phone side. But I was just curious could you do it via the SDK?

Answer 1

• Export the database to the sdcard file, and each time you have to copy over to your computer, and open by some SQLite Manager tool, I use Firefox’s plugin for this. There simple I don’t have to reopen the database again and again, just hit the refresh button and the tables will get updated.

You can use Eclipse’s File Manager to get a file from the device, from sdcard while it’s in usb mode. You have this option only as you cannot get the device into Eclipse and mount the SD Card in the same time. You have to use Eclipse.

Here is the code to export the database to SDCard

/*
     * Task to backup the database to the SDCard
     */
    public static class ExportDatabaseFileTask extends AsyncTask<String, Void, Boolean> {
        private Context ctx;

        /**
         *
         */
        public ExportDatabaseFileTask(Context ctx) {
            super();
            this.ctx=ctx;
        }

        // automatically done on worker thread (separate from UI thread)
        protected Boolean doInBackground(final String... args) {

           File dbFile =
                    new File(Environment.getDataDirectory() + "/data/[com.your.pkg]/databases/[pkg]");

           File exportDir = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory(), "");
           if (!exportDir.exists()) {
              exportDir.mkdirs();
           }
           File file = new File(exportDir, dbFile.getName());

           try {
              file.createNewFile();
              this.copyFile(dbFile, file);
              return true;
           } catch (IOException e) {
              Log.e("birthdroid", e.getMessage(), e);
              return false;
           }
        }

        // can use UI thread here
        protected void onPostExecute(final Boolean success) {
           if (success) {
              Toast.makeText(ctx, "Export successful!", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
           } else {
              Toast.makeText(ctx, "Export failed", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
           }
        }

        void copyFile(File src, File dst) throws IOException {
           FileChannel inChannel = new FileInputStream(src).getChannel();
           FileChannel outChannel = new FileOutputStream(dst).getChannel();
           try {
              inChannel.transferTo(0, inChannel.size(), outChannel);
           } finally {
              if (inChannel != null)
                 inChannel.close();
              if (outChannel != null)
                 outChannel.close();
           }
        }

     }

• On a cursor you always can call:

  DatabaseUtils.dumpCursorToString(cur);

to get a raw String representation of the cursor