Question

Ok, I’m quite stumped here. I’m getting an error, eclipse/android is saying that my app is crashing because a column does not exist in a table. The problem is, I’m not using the column id it’s quoting, and I can’t find any reason why it’s doing this.

In my DB create statement:

 private static final String CREATE_HISTORY_TABLE=
            " create table if not exists  " + HISTORY_TABLE +
            " (id integer primary key autoincrement," +
            " DebtName text, Date date, Payment real )";

In my onCreate:

 public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
  setContentView(R.layout.paymenthistory_dialog);
  Bundle extras = getIntent().getExtras();
  String debtname = extras.getString(DbAdapter.KEY_DEBT);
  String[] from = new String[]{ DbAdapter.KEY_HISTORY_DATE, DbAdapter.KEY_HISTORY_PAYMENT};
  int[] to = new int[]{R.id.PAYMENTDATE, R.id.PAYMENTDATE};
  ListView paymenthistory = (ListView)findViewById(R.id.paymenthistorylist);
  DatabaseHelper db = new DatabaseHelper(this);
  Cursor PaymentsCursor = db.getReadableDatabase().rawQuery("SELECT * FROM tblPaymentHistory WHERE DebtName = '"+debtname+"'", null);
---> SimpleCursorAdapter HistoryAdapter = new SimpleCursorAdapter(PaymentHistory.this, R.layout.paymenthistoryrow, PaymentsCursor, from, to);
          paymenthistory.setAdapter(HistoryAdapter);
}   

The line with the arrow is the one that has the error. I’ve opened the DB in an sqlite browser, and it has “id” as the column name, yet I consistently get the following error in eclipse when I test my activity:

11-18 00:26:40.775: E/AndroidRuntime(18419): Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: column ‘_id’ does not exist

Answer 1

_id is a special column in SQLite. Normally it’s created automatically if you don’t create it.

This error happens because SimpleCursorAdapter needs a column named _id.

To fix this, you can either

• Change your queries so that they are similar to:

  SELECT DISTINCT id as _id …

• Or recreate the table and rename id to _id