Insert binary file in SQLite database with Python

Question

I\'m trying to write a simple Python script that inserts .odt documents into an SQLite database. Here is what I have done so far, but it doesn\'t seem to work:

Answer 1

There are multiple problems with the given example. I will address them one by one.

• There is no error checking. We either need to use the try/except/finally construct or use the with keyword.
• Python methods are not like C# properties. You are not running the execute() method, you are assigning some string to an object. (In Python, methods are objects too.)
• Very important is that your code is subject to SQL Injection attacks. We should never build SQL statements using Python string operations. We should always use placeholders.
• The example is incomplete. Which leads to a tricky issue. Supposing, that there was a CREATE TABLE statement then a new implicit transaction would be created. And a commit() statement must be issued to save the data to the database file. In SQLite, any statement other than SELECT starts an implicit transaction. (Some databases, like MySQL, are in the autocommit mode by default. This is not true for SQLite.)

Here is a proper working example, which will write a LibreOffice document to a Docs table of an SQLite database:

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import sqlite3 as lite

fl = open('book.odt', 'rb')

with fl:
    data = fl.read()

con = lite.connect('test.db')

with con:

    cur = con.cursor()     

    cur.execute("CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS Docs(Data BLOB)")

    sql = "INSERT INTO Docs(Data) VALUES (?)" 
    cur.execute(sql, (lite.Binary(data), ))

The book.odt file is located in the current working directory. We did not call the commit() method manually, since this is handled by the with keyword behind the scenes.