Dart and Flutter SQLite Database Tutorial: CRUD Operations with sqflite

Dart and Flutter SQLite Database Tutorial: CRUD Operations with sqflite

In this tutorial, we'll learn how to run example CRUD operations against a SQLite database in a flutter mobile application using the sqflite plugin.

SQLite Database CRUD with Dart and Flutter

Flutter is a cross-platform mobile SDK for building Android and iOS apps with Dart. Both Dart and Flutter are created by Google and getting more popular everyday.

What's Database CRUD?

CRUD stands for Create, Read, Update and Delete and it's a set of common operations that most data-driven apps use to create and manipulate data in databases.

Why Using a SQLite Database?

For mobile applications, SQLite is a very popular database that fits in a single file and provides features similar to fully-fledged databases like MySQL.

Since flutter is a mobile SDK, you'll mostly need to have access to SQLite in many of your apps. The sqflite plugin let's you access SQLite in flutter using dart.

Now after the introduction, let's see how to use SQLite in your Flutter app with a CRUD example.

In the following example, we'll suppose we are creating a customer management application where we have a Customer table with id, first name, last name and email attributes. We will see how to create, read, update and delete customers from a SQLite database

Prerequisites

Before, you can follow this tutorial, you will need to have a development environment setup for flutter development.

Steps For Using SQLite in Dart's Flutter

In nutshell, these are the steps required to use SQLite in your Flutter application.

Step 1: Importing sqflite

You first need to start by importing sqflite plugin in your project. Open the pubspec.yaml file and add the following line:

dependencies:
    sqflite:  "^0.11.0+1"

After that, you are ready to use sqflite to access SQLite in your Flutter application.

Step 2: Creating & Opening the Database

Next, you need to create and open a database using the provided openDatabase() method. For example:

createDatabase() async {
  String databasesPath = await getDatabasesPath();
  String dbPath = join(databasesPath, 'my.db');

  var database = await openDatabase(dbPath, version: 1, onCreate: populateDb);
  return database;
}

The openDatabase() method takes a bunch of parameters: The path to the database file, the version of the database which makes it easy to migrate and upgrade the database and a callback function which will be called when the database is successfully created.

Step 3: Creating the Database Table(s)

You next need to define the populateDb() function that you specified as the callback:

void populateDb(Database database, int version) async {
  await database.execute("CREATE TABLE Customer ("
          "id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,"
          "first_name TEXT,"
          "last_name TEXT,"
          "email TEXT"
          ")");
}

In the callback function, we execute our first query against the database which allows us to create a table called Customer with four columns.

You can of course create as many tables as you want and define relationships between them to create your desired database schema.

Step 5: Adding a Data Model

Before creating the CRUD operations we need to add a model. Create a lib/model/customer.dart file and add the following class:

class Customer {
    int id;
    String firstName;
    String lastName;
    String email;

    Customer({
        this.id,
        this.firstName,
        this.lastName,
        this.email,
    });

    int get id => id;
    String get firstName => firstName;
    String get lastName => lastName;
    String get email => email;


    factory Customer.fromJson(Map<String, dynamic> data) => new Customer(
        id: data["id"],
        firstName: data["first_name"],
        lastName: data["last_name"],
        email: data["email"],
    );

    Map<String, dynamic> toJson() => {
        "id": id,
        "first_name": firstName,
        "last_name": lastName,
        "email": email,
    };
}

Step 4: Adding CRUD Methods

Finally, we can define our CRUD operations.

You can use different approaches for running CRUD operations: The RawSQL queries or a high level API.

Implementing the Create Operation

Let's start with a method to create a customer in the database table:

First Approach: Using the insert() Method
Future<int> createCustomer(Customer customer) async {
  var result = await database.insert("Customer", customer.toMap());
  return result;
}

As you can see, we simply convert our customer object to map (using the toMap() method we've defined in the Customer model) and we pass it in to the insert() method which takes the name of the table as the first parameter and data as the second parameter.

Second Approach: Using the rawInsert() Method
createCustomer(Customer customer) async {
    var result = await database.rawInsert(
      "INSERT INTO Customer (id,first_name, last_name, email)"
      " VALUES (${customer.id},${customer.firstName},${customer.lastName},${customer.email})");
    return result;
  }

The rawInsert() method allows us to run raw INSERT queries like we do in plain SQLite.

Implementing the Read (All) Operation

Now, let's implement the read operation of CRUD,

First Approach: Using the query() Method

The query() method is a high level abstraction that takes the name of the table and the columns then return data.

Future<List> getCustomers() async {
  var result = await database.query("Customer", columns: ["id", "first_name", "last_name", "email"]);

  return result.toList();
}

We use the toList() method to convert the result set to a a Dart List.

Second Approach: Using the rawQuery() Method
Future<List> getCustomers() async {
  var result = await database.rawQuery('SELECT * FROM Customer');
  return result.toList();
}

With the rawQuery() method, you simply pass in the raw SELECT query.

Implementing the Read (by Id) Operation

After getting all customers from the database, we now need to get a single customer by its identifier.

First Approach: Using the query() Method

Just like the previous example, we use the query method to get data from a table. We specify the table as the first parameter, the columns as the second parameter and this time we also add a where parameter that takes the WHERE clause and a whereArgs array for passing the where arguments.

Future<Customer> getCustomer(int id) async {
  List<Map> results = await db.query("Customer",
      columns: ["id", "first_name", "last_name", "email"],
      where: 'id = ?',
      whereArgs: [id]);

  if (results.length > 0) {
    return new Customer.fromMap(results.first);
  }

  return null;
}

We want to get a customer by id so we pass in a id = ? clause. the ? symbol will be replaced by the actual value from the whereArgs parameter.

Second Approach: Using the rawQuery() Method
Future<Customer> getCustomer(int id) async {
  var results = await database.rawQuery('SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE id = $id');

  if (results.length > 0) {
    return new Customer.fromMap(results.first);
  }

  return null;
}

Implementing the Update Operation

Now, let's implement the update operation using the two approaches.

First Approach: Using the update() Method

The update() method is similar to the query() method but for updating data:

Future<int> updateCustomer(Customer customer) async {
  return await database.update("Customer", customer.toMap(), where: "id = ?", whereArgs: [customer.id]);
}

We pass in the table name, the customer data as a map, the WHERE clause and the WHERE arguments.

Second Approach; Using the rawUpdate() Method

The rawUpdate() method is used to run a raw UPDATE query against the database:

Future<int> updateCustomer(Customer customer) async {
  return await database.rawUpdate(
      'UPDATE Customer SET first_name = ${customer.firstName} WHERE id = ${customer.id}'
  );
}

Implementing the Delete Operation

Finally, we need to implement the delete operation of our CRUD example. This is also can be done following two approaches:

First Approach: Using the delete() Method

The delete() method takes a table name, the WHERE clause and the WHERE arguments:

Future<int> deleteCustomer(int id) async {
  return await database.delete("Customer", where: 'id = ?', whereArgs: [id]);
}

Second Approach: Using the rawDelete() Method

The rawDelete() method takes a raw DELETE query:

Future<int> deleteCustomer(int id) async {
  return await db.rawDelete('DELETE FROM Customer WHERE id = $id');
}

Step 5: Close the Database

After finishing with the database, you can execute the following method to close it:

await database.close();

Conclusion

In this quick tutorial, we've seen how we can implement CRUD operations against a SQLite database in a Flutter mobile application using the sqflite plugin.

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