C#: Extract Data from Database Files without SQL

The database is considered to be an integral part of most of the applications. Be it a desktop, web or mobile application, database plays a vital role in storing, accessing and manipulating the data. There are many database management systems that allow creating and managing databases for you.

However, there could be a scenario when you need a way to extract data from database files, i.e. .db file, without installing a database management system or writing the SQL queries. How would you parse the database file in such a case and get the data from it?

In this article, I am going to demonstrate how easily you can extract the data from the tables in an SQLite database without writing SQL queries. I am going to use GroupDocs.Parser for .NET API which supports extracting data from databases via ADO.NET.

Steps to Extract Data from Tables in SQLite Database (.db)

1. Create a new project in Visual Studio.

2. Install GroupDocs.Parser for .NET from NuGet.

3. Add the following namespaces.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using GroupDocs.Parser.Data;
using GroupDocs.Parser.Options;

4. Prepare the connection string.

string connectionString = string.Format("Provider=System.Data.Sqlite;Data Source={0};Version=3;", "sqlite.db");

5. Load the database file in the Parser object.

using (Parser parser = new Parser(connectionString, new LoadOptions(FileFormat.Database)))
{
   // your code goes here
}

6. Get list of the tables in the database using Parser.GetToc method.

// Get a list of tables
IEnumerable<TocItem> toc = parser.GetToc();

7. Iterate over the tables and extract data.

// Iterate over tables
foreach (TocItem i in toc)
{
    // Print the table name
    Console.WriteLine(i.Text);
    // Extract a table content as a text
    using (TextReader reader = parser.GetText(i.PageIndex.Value))
    {
          Console.WriteLine(reader.ReadToEnd());
    }
}

Complete Code

string connectionString = string.Format("Provider=System.Data.Sqlite;Data Source={0};Version=3;", "sqlite.db");
// Create an instance of Parser class to extract tables from the database.
// Connection string is passed as first parameter and LoadOptions is set to Database file format.
using (Parser parser = new Parser(connectionString, new LoadOptions(FileFormat.Database)))
{
    // Get a list of tables
    IEnumerable<TocItem> toc = parser.GetToc();
    // Iterate over tables
    foreach (TocItem i in toc)
    {
        // Print the table name
        Console.WriteLine(i.Text);
        // Extract a table content as a text
        using (TextReader reader = parser.GetText(i.PageIndex.Value))
        {
            Console.WriteLine(reader.ReadToEnd());
        }
    }
}

Output

Cheers!

Blog

C#: Extract Data from Database Files without SQL

Usman Aziz

Steps to Extract Data from Tables in SQLite Database (.db)

Complete Code

Output

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