Panorama of javascript SQLite solutions
In the browser
If you want to access a SQLite database from inside a web browser, you don't have many solutions.
sql.js
The SQLite C library has been ported to javascript using emscripten. The port was started under the name of sql.js by Alon Zakai (who is also the author of emscripten). I am the current maintainer of this library.
The API goes like:
<script src='js/sql.js'></script>
<script>
//Create the database
var db = new SQL.Database();
// Run a query without reading the results
db.run("CREATE TABLE test (col1, col2);");
// Insert two rows: (1,111) and (2,222)
db.run("INSERT INTO test VALUES (?,?), (?,?)", [1,111,2,222]);
// Prepare a statement
var stmt = db.prepare("SELECT * FROM test WHERE a BETWEEN $start AND $end");
stmt.getAsObject({$start:1, $end:1}); // {col1:1, col2:111}
// Bind new values
stmt.bind({$start:1, $end:2});
while(stmt.step()) { //
var row = stmt.getAsObject();
// [...] do something with the row of result
}
</script>
Web SQL
The W3C had started to work on a native API for executing SQL inside the browser, called web sql. An example of use of that API:
var db = openDatabase('mydb', '1.0', 'my first database', 2 * 1024 * 1024);
db.transaction(function (tx) {
tx.executeSql('CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS foo (id unique, text)');
tx.executeSql('INSERT INTO foo (id, text) VALUES (1, "synergies")');
});
However, the project has been abandoned. Thus it's not widely supported. See: http://caniuse.com/sql-storage
In node
If you write client-side javascript, in node, you have a little more choices. See: https://www.npmjs.org/search?q=sqlite .
node-sqlite3
If you have a compilation toolchain, and can don't care about having to compile your application for different platforms (or target only one platform), I would advise that you use node-sqlite3. It is fast (much faster than sql.js), has a complete API and a good documentation. An example of the API is as follow:
var sqlite3 = require('sqlite3').verbose();
var db = new sqlite3.Database(':memory:');
db.serialize(function() {
db.run("CREATE TABLE lorem (info TEXT)");
var stmt = db.prepare("INSERT INTO lorem VALUES (?)");
for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
stmt.run("Ipsum " + i);
}
stmt.finalize();
db.each("SELECT rowid AS id, info FROM lorem", function(err, row) {
console.log(row.id + ": " + row.info);
});
});
db.close();
sql.js
Yes, again. sql.js can be used from node.
This is the solution if you want a pure javascript application. However, it will be slower than the previous solution.
Here is an example of how to use sql.js from node:
var fs = require('fs');
var SQL = require('sql.js');
var filebuffer = fs.readFileSync('test.sqlite');
db.run("INSERT INTO test VALUES (?,?,?)", [1, 'hello', true]); -- corrected INT to INTO
var data = db.export();
var buffer = new Buffer(data);
fs.writeFileSync("filename.sqlite", buffer);
