Using SQLite databases with MonoTouch iPhone applications is surprisingly easy to do. For this example I have created a small application which queries a SQLite database and displays a list of country names in a UITableView. The sample project can be downloaded here.
Step 1 is to create an SQLite database. To do this I use the free "SQLite database browser" tool. As you can see I have created a single table with two fields and inserted a number of rows (all the countries I have worked in).
Once you have created the database, add it to your project and then set the properties for the database file as follows:
- Build Action = Content
- Copy to output directory = Copy Always
Next you need to add references for:
- System.Data.dll
- Mono.Data.SQLite.dll
After that the data access code is pretty straight forward as can be seen below:
var conn = new SqliteConnection("Data Source=ExampleDB");
using (var cmd = conn.CreateCommand())
{
conn.Open();
cmd.CommandText ="select CountryID, CountryName from Countries";
using(var reader = cmd.ExecuteReader())
{
while (reader.Read())
{
Country c = new Country(int.Parse(reader["CountryID"].ToString()),
(string)reader["CountryName"]);
_Countries.Add(c);
}
}
}
As you can see, the database access code is fairly standard! Run the sample project in the simulator and you should see the database contents displayed.
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