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pointfreeco/sqlite-data

A [fast](#Performance), lightweight replacement for SwiftData, powered by SQL and supporting

Learn more

This library was motivated and designed over the course of many episodes on Point-Free, a video series exploring advanced programming topics in the Swift language, hosted by Brandon Williams and Stephen Celis. To support the continued development of this library, subscribe today.

<a href="https://www.pointfree.co/collections/modern-persistence"> <img alt="video poster image" src="https://d3rccdn33rt8ze.cloudfront.net/episodes/0325.jpeg" width="600"> </a>

Overview

SQLiteData is a fast, lightweight replacement for SwiftData, including CloudKit synchronization (and even CloudKit sharing), built on top of the popular [GRDB] library. To populate data from the database you can use @Table and @FetchAll, which are similar to SwiftData's @Model and @Query:

<table> <tr> <th>SQLiteData</th> <th>SwiftData</th> </tr> <tr valign=top> <td width=415>

@FetchAll
var items: [Item]

@Table
struct Item {
  let id: UUID
  var title = ""
  var isInStock = true
  var notes = ""
}

</td> <td width=415>

@Query
var items: [Item]

@Model
class Item {
  var title: String
  var isInStock: Bool
  var notes: String
  init(
    title: String = "",
    isInStock: Bool = true,
    notes: String = ""
  ) {
    self.title = title
    self.isInStock = isInStock
    self.notes = notes
  }
}

</td> </tr> </table>

Both of the above examples fetch items from an external data store using Swift data types, and both are automatically observed by SwiftUI so that views are recomputed when the external data changes, but SQLiteData is powered directly by SQLite and is usable from UIKit, @Observable models, and more.

For more information on SQLiteData's querying capabilities, see [Fetching model data][fetching-article].

Quick start

Before SQLiteData's property wrappers can fetch data from SQLite, you need to provide–at runtime–the default database it should use. This is typically done as early as possible in your app's lifetime, like the app entry point in SwiftUI, and is analogous to configuring model storage in SwiftData:

<table> <tr> <th>SQLiteData</th> <th>SwiftData</th> </tr> <tr valign=top> <td width=415>

@main
struct MyApp: App {
  init() {
    prepareDependencies {
      let db = try! DatabaseQueue(
        // Create/migrate a database
        // connection
      )
      $0.defaultDatabase = db
    }
  }
  // ...
}

</td> <td width=415>

@main
struct MyApp: App {
  let container = {
    // Create/configure a container
    try! ModelContainer(/* ... */)
  }()

  var body: some Scene {
    WindowGroup {
      ContentView()
        .modelContainer(container)
    }
  }
}

</td> </tr> </table>

[!NOTE] For more information on preparing a SQLite database, see [Preparing a SQLite database][preparing-db-article].

This defaultDatabase connection is used implicitly by SQLiteData's strategies, like [@FetchAll][fetchall-docs] and [@FetchOne][fetchone-docs], which are similar to SwiftData's @Query macro, but more powerful:

<table> <tr> <th>SQLiteData</th> <th>SwiftData</th> </tr> <tr valign=top> <td width=415>

@FetchAll
var items: [Item]

@FetchAll(Item.order(by: \.title))
var items

@FetchAll(Item.where(\.isInStock))
var items



@FetchAll(Item.order(by: \.isInStock))
var items

@FetchOne(Item.count())
var itemsCount = 0

</td> <td width=415>

@Query
var items: [Item]

@Query(sort: [SortDescriptor(\.title)])
var items: [Item]

@Query(filter: #Predicate<Item> {
  $0.isInStock
})
var items: [Item]

// No @Query equivalent of ordering
// by boolean column.

// No @Query equivalent of counting
// entries in database without loading
// all entries.

</td> </tr> </table>

And you can access this database throughout your application in a way similar to how one accesses a model context, via a property wrapper:

<table> <tr> <th>SQLiteData</th> <th>SwiftData</th> </tr> <tr valign=top> <td width=415>

@Dependency(\.defaultDatabase)
var database

let newItem = Item(/* ... */)
try database.write { db in
  try Item.insert { newItem }
    .execute(db))
}

</td> <td width=415>

@Environment(\.modelContext)
var modelContext

let newItem = Item(/* ... */)
modelContext.insert(newItem)
try modelContext.save()

</td> </tr> </table>

[!NOTE] For more information on how SQLiteData compares to SwiftData, see [Comparison with SwiftData][comparison-swiftdata-article].

Further, if you want to synchronize the local database to CloudKit so that it is available on all your user's devices, simply configure a SyncEngine in the entry point of the app:

@main
struct MyApp: App {
  init() {
    prepareDependencies {
      $0.defaultDatabase = try! appDatabase()
      $0.defaultSyncEngine = SyncEngine(
        for: $0.defaultDatabase,
        tables: Item.self
      )
    }
  }
  // ...
}

[!NOTE] For more information on synchronizing the database to CloudKit and sharing records with iCloud users, see [CloudKit Synchronization].

This is all you need to know to get started with SQLiteData, but there's much more to learn. Read the [articles][articles] below to learn how to best utilize this library:

[Fetching model data][fetching-article] [Observing changes to model data][observing-article] [Preparing a SQLite database][preparing-db-article] [Dynamic queries][dynamic-queries-article] [CloudKit Synchronization] [Comparison with SwiftData][comparison-swiftdata-article]

[observing-article]: https://swiftpackageindex.com/pointfreeco/sqlite-data/main/documentation/sqlitedata/observing [dynamic-queries-article]: https://swiftpackageindex.com/pointfreeco/sqlite-data/main/documentation/sqlitedata/dynamicqueries [articles]: https://swiftpackageindex.com/pointfreeco/sqlite-data/main/documentation/sqlitedata#Essentials [comparison-swiftdata-article]: https://swiftpackageindex.com/pointfreeco/sqlite-data/main/documentation/sqlitedata/comparisonwithswiftdata [fetching-article]: https://swiftpackageindex.com/pointfreeco/sqlite-data/main/documentation/sqlitedata/fetching [preparing-db-article]: https://swiftpackageindex.com/pointfreeco/sqlite-data/main/documentation/sqlitedata/preparingdatabase [CloudKit Synchronization]: https://swiftpackageindex.com/pointfreeco/sqlite-data/main/documentation/sqlitedata/cloudkit [fetchall-docs]: https://swiftpackageindex.com/pointfreeco/sqlite-data/main/documentation/sqlitedata/fetchall [fetchone-docs]: https://swiftpackageindex.com/pointfreeco/sqlite-data/main/documentation/sqlitedata/fetchone

Performance

SQLiteData leverages high-performance decoding from [StructuredQueries] to turn fetched data into your Swift domain types, and has a performance profile similar to invoking SQLite's C APIs directly.

See the following benchmarks against Lighter's performance test suite for a taste of how it compares:

Orders.fetchAll                           setup    rampup   duration
   SQLite (generated by Enlighter 1.4.10) 0        0.144    7.183
   Lighter (1.4.10)                       0        0.164    8.059
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  SQLiteData (1.0.0)                     0        0.172    8.511  │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
   GRDB (7.4.1, manual decoding)          0        0.376    18.819
   SQLite.swift (0.15.3, manual decoding) 0        0.564    27.994
   SQLite.swift (0.15.3, Codable)         0        0.863    43.261
   GRDB (7.4.1, Codable)                  0.002    1.07     53.326

SQLite knowledge required

SQLite is one of the most established and widely distributed pieces of software in the history of software. Knowledge of SQLite is a great skill for any app developer to have, and this library does not want to conceal it from you. So, we feel that to best wield this library you should be familiar with the basics of SQLite, including schema design and normalization, SQL queries, including joins and aggregates, and performance, including indices.

With some basic knowledge you can apply this library to your database schema in order to query for data and keep your views up-to-date when data in the database changes, and you can use [StructuredQueries] to build queries, either using its type-safe, discoverable [query building APIs], or using its #sql macro for writing [safe SQL strings].

Further, this library is built on the popular and battle-tested [GRDB] library for interacting with SQLite, such as executing queries and observing the database for changes.

[StructuredQueries]: https://github.com/pointfreeco/swift-structured-queries [GRDB]: https://github.com/groue/GRDB.swift [query building APIs]: https://swiftpackageindex.com/pointfreeco/swift-structured-queries/~/documentation/structuredqueriescore [safe SQL strings]: https://swiftpackageindex.com/pointfreeco/swift-structured-queries/~/documentation/structuredqueriescore/safesqlstrings

Demos

This repo comes with lots of examples to demonstrate how to solve common and complex problems with SQLiteData. Check out this directory to see them all, including:

<br> Demonstrates how to solve some common application problems in an isolated environment, in both SwiftUI and UIKit. Things like animations, dynamic queries, database transactions, and more.

<br> A simplified demo that shows how to synchronize a SQLite database to CloudKit and how to share records with other iCloud users. See our dedicated articles on [CloudKit Synchronization] and [CloudKit Sharing] for more information.

[CloudKit Synchronization]: https://swiftpackageindex.com/pointfreeco/sqlite-data/main/documentation/sqlitedata/cloudkit [CloudKit Sharing]: https://swiftpackageindex.com/pointfreeco/sqlite-data/main/documentation/sqlitedata/cloudkitsharing

<br> A rebuild of Apple's [Reminders][reminders-app-store] app that uses a SQLite database to model the reminders, lists and tags. It features many advanced queries, such as searching, stats aggregation, and multi-table joins. It also features CloudKit synchronization and sharing.

<br> This application is a faithful reconstruction of one of Apple's more interesting sample projects, called [Scrumdinger][scrumdinger], and uses SQLite to persist the data for meetings. We have also added CloudKit synchronization so that all changes are automatically made available on all of the user's devices.

[Scrumdinger]: https://developer.apple.com/tutorials/app-dev-training/getting-started-with-scrumdinger [reminders-app-store]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reminders/id1108187841

Documentation

The documentation for releases and main are available here:

main 1.x.x

Installation

You can add SQLiteData to an Xcode project by adding it to your project as a package…

https://github.com/pointfreeco/sqlite-data

…and adding the SQLiteData product to your target.

If you want to use SQLiteData in a SwiftPM project, it's as simple as adding it to your Package.swift:

dependencies: [
  .package(url: "https://github.com/pointfreeco/sqlite-data", from: "1.0.0")
]

And then adding the following product to any target that needs access to the library:

.product(name: "SQLiteData", package: "sqlite-data"),

Community

If you want to discuss this library or have a question about how to use it to solve a particular problem, there are a number of places you can discuss with fellow Point-Free enthusiasts:

* For long-form discussions, we recommend the discussions tab of this repo.

* For casual chat, we recommend the Point-Free Community Slack.

License

This library is released under the MIT license. See LICENSE for details.

Package Metadata

Repository: pointfreeco/sqlite-data

Default branch: main

README: README.md