Friday, September 23, 2011

SuperSQLiteOpenHelper

Every Android developer has to work with databases at some point.  And every time, each developer has to go through the motions of not just designing the database schema, but setting up the SQLiteOpenHelper to make it work with your application.  Every time, developers need to create the same functions to create, upgrade, and interface to the database.  There are plenty of libraries out there that do import and export but most of them require custom code each time as well.  After one or two databases implementations, I kinda got tired of it (I know, I'm really impatient).  I wanted to know why some of this stuff was easier to do.  I set out to make it so.

Introducing SuperSQLiteOpenHelperhttp://code.google.com/p/supersqliteopenhelper/

Using this library, the developer no longer needs to remake code.  The library supports automatic creation, upgrade, and even downgrade of the database.  Any database can be imported from and exported a file or a DOM element that can be included in an application-wide import/export.  A few other database tools allow the user to focus on the one thing that makes a database so useful: the schema.

With SuperSQLiteOpenHelper, developers only need to create a schema and whatever custom interface methods they need in their application.  The schema is saved in an easy to understand format and can handle versioning automatically. Table-wide constraints can also be added to make each table more intelligent.

I welcome all Android developers to come take a look at the library.  Check out the code, download the library, try it out, and let me know what you think.  Anyone interested in helping me test, let me know.  I want to make this library as powerful and as helpful as I can.  If there are any more functions or ideas out there of what to add, comment here or on the Google Code site.

Thanks to all for any future input and happy coding!