Question

I’m in need of some help in developing a desktop application with a pre-populated database. I have tried numerous ways to get this working including those mentioned on both Tidesdk’s API here http://tidesdk.multipart.net/docs/user-dev/generated/#!/api/Ti.Database.DB and at Titanium Desktops old API here http://developer.appcelerator.com/apidoc/desktop/latest/Titanium.Database-module.

While the later (using Titanium not Ti) works in creating a database in the apps directory it does not install my pre-populated sqlite database which is located in the resources file of my app.

A couple of my attempts located below

var db = Titanium.Database.openFile('test_db.sqlite', 'test_db');

var db = Titanium.Database.openFile(Ti.Filesystem.getFile(
                          Ti.Filesystem.getApplicationDataDirectory(), 'test_db.sqlite')); 

var db = Ti.Database.open('test_db');

As stated most of these manage to create a database with the name given but when trying to run something as simple as a db.execute(SELECT) of something I know would exist in my pre-populated db I receive an error stating

 Exception executing: SELECT name, id FROM people ORDER BY name COLLATE NOCASE, Error was: SQL Statement invalid or database missing

I have searched high and low for something to answer this but everyone continues to refer to the aforementioned API’s or to the Mobile API’s Ti.database.install() which does not work either.

Is it possible with titanium desktop to use a pre-populated sqlite database or do I have to populate it after I create it? If so any direction would be helpful (where to place the .sqlite file in the app and what functions to call).

I am currently using Titanium Studio with a titanium desktop osx SDK of 1.2.0.RC4 as requested by tidesdk.org until they have released there open source sdk.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

This is possible, I just used this feature in a recent desktop app, deployed it successfully to Windows and Mac.

In my experience, sometimes your database file can be corrupted, for example if you use the Titanium.Database.install command, and it cant find the file to preload from (maybe the first time you specified the path wrong for instance), it will create the file itself, any subsequent install commands will not work because it already thinks this database has been installed.

Have you tried clearing out the application data? This is where titanium installs the database. For Mac this is in your /User/Library/Application Support/APPNAME directory. Their is a directory for databases, delete this and try again.

Also, this answer on Titanium Q&A may help, it talks about the process with the Mobile SDK but the Database stuff is the same.

Hope this helps!