How do I check in SQLite whether a table exists?

Question

How do I, reliably, check in SQLite, whether a particular user table exists?

I am not asking for unreliable ways like checking if a "select *" on the table returned an error or not (is this even a good idea?).

The reason is like this:

In my program, I need to create and then populate some tables if they do not exist already.

If they do already exist, I need to update some tables.

Should I take some other path instead to signal that the tables in question have already been created - say for example, by creating/putting/setting a certain flag in my program initialization/settings file on disk or something?

Or does my approach make sense?

See Ravens comment SELECT EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM sqlite_master WHERE type="table" AND name="table_name"); seems to really cut the result down to a boolean result (either 0 or 1, nothing else) — Erik Bachmann
– Erik Bachmann, Commented Sep 16, 2023 at 12:52

Brian Olson · Accepted Answer · 2023-02-09 06:41:46Z

-3

Look into the "try - throw - catch" construct in C++. Most other programming languages have a similar construct for handling errors.

answered Feb 9, 2023 at 6:41

Brian Olson

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