Troubleshooting

If you do not have problems using the sqlite_shell.py described before, you do not need to read this section.

Python already comes with a built-in SQLite database engine to process SQL. However, it doesn't come with a "shell" to let you interact with it from the terminal. Because of this, until now, you have been using a simplified SQLite shell written by us. However, you may find the shell is old, buggy, or lacking in features. In that case, you may want to download and use the official SQLite executable.

If running python3 sqlite_shell.py didn't work, you can download a precompiled sqlite directly by following the following instructions and then use sqlite3 and ./sqlite3 instead of python3 sqlite_shell.py based on which is specified for your platform.

Another way to start using SQLite is to download a precompiled binary from the SQLite website.

SQLite version 3.32.3 or higher should be sufficient.

However, before proceeding, please remove (or rename) any SQLite executables (sqlite3, sqlite_shell.py, and the like) from the current folder, or they may conflict with the official one you download below. Similarly, if you wish to switch back later, please remove or rename the one you downloaded and restore the files you removed.

Windows

  1. Visit the download page linked above and navigate to the section Precompiled Binaries for Windows. Click on the link sqlite-tools-win32-x86-*.zip to download the binary.

  2. Unzip the file. There should be a sqlite3.exe file in the directory after extraction.

  3. Navigate to the folder containing the sqlite3.exe file and check that the version is at least 3.32.3:

    $ cd path/to/sqlite
$ ./sqlite3 --version
3.32.3 2020-06-18 14:16:19

macOS Big Sur (11.0.1) or newer

SQLite comes pre-installed. Check that you have a version that's greater than 3.32.3:

$ sqlite3
SQLite version 3.32.3

macOS (older versions)

SQLite comes pre-installed, but it may be the wrong version. You can take the following steps if the pre-installed version is less than 3.32.3.

  1. Visit the download page linked above and navigate to the section Precompiled Binaries for Mac OS X (x86). Click on the link sqlite-tools-osx-x86-*.zip to download the binary.

  2. Unzip the file. There should be a sqlite3 file in the directory after extraction.

  3. Navigate to the folder containing the sqlite3 file and check that the version is at least 3.32.3:

    $ cd path/to/sqlite
$ ./sqlite3 --version
3.32.3 2020-06-18 14:16:19

Ubuntu

The easiest way to use SQLite on Ubuntu is to install it straight from the native repositories (the version will be slightly behind the most recent release). Check that the version is greater than 3.32.3:

$ sudo apt install sqlite3
$ sqlite3 --version
3.32.3 2020-06-18 14:16:19