Proper use of callback function of sqlite3 in C++

Question

I have the following C++ code for testing purposes in conjunction with SQLite3. It\'s a class called customer with a callback function declared. This callback f

Answer 1

Using sqlite3_exec has the disadvantages that you have to convert some values back from a string to a number, and that it needs to allocate memory for all result records (which can lead to problems when reading large tables). Furthermore, the callback always is a separate function (even if it's in the same class).

For your example query, using the sqlite3_prepare/sqlite3_step/sqlite3_finalize API would look like this:

void one_customer::readFromDB(sqlite3* db, int id)
{
    sqlite3_stmt *stmt;
    int rc = sqlite3_prepare_v2(db, "SELECT FirstName, LastName, Age"
                                    " FROM customerTable"
                                    " WHERE Id = ?", -1, &stmt, NULL);
    if (rc != SQLITE_OK)
        throw string(sqlite3_errmsg(db));

    rc = sqlite3_bind_int(stmt, 1, id);    // Using parameters ("?") is not
    if (rc != SQLITE_OK) {                 // really necessary, but recommended
        string errmsg(sqlite3_errmsg(db)); // (especially for strings) to avoid
        sqlite3_finalize(stmt);            // formatting problems and SQL
        throw errmsg;                      // injection attacks.
    }

    rc = sqlite3_step(stmt);
    if (rc != SQLITE_ROW && rc != SQLITE_DONE) {
        string errmsg(sqlite3_errmsg(db));
        sqlite3_finalize(stmt);
        throw errmsg;
    }
    if (rc == SQLITE_DONE) {
        sqlite3_finalize(stmt);
        throw string("customer not found");
    }

    this->id         = id;
    this->first_name = string(sqlite3_column_text(stmt, 0));
    this->last_name  = string(sqlite3_column_text(stmt, 1));
    this->age        =        sqlite3_column_int(stmt, 2);

    sqlite3_finalize(stmt);
}

(This code handles errors by just throwing a string with the error message.)

Answer 2

What one typically does in this case is take advantage of the void * (which you call NotUsed) parameter of the callback -- a parameter you define when you install the callback. For C++, you would typically set that parameter to the this pointer to your interested object, and you would make the callback (an extern "C" function in a c++ source file) a friend method to your class (if necessary).

This would look like this:

class customer
{
    ...
public:
    int callback(int argc, char **argv, char **azColName);
};

static int c_callback(void *param, int argc, char **argv, char **azColName)
{
    customer* cust = reinterpret_cast<customer*>(param);
    return cust->callback(argc, argv, azColName);
}

char* customer::getCustomer(int id)
{
    ...
    rc = sqlite3_exec(db, sql, c_callback, this, &errMsg);
    ...
}

int customer::callback(int argc, char **argv, char **azColName)
{
    ...
}