I would like to know how to access the functionalities provided by SQLite’s command line interface, namely the commands .tables and .dump, through the Python sqlite3 module. Specifically, I’m looking for a way to programmatically obtain a list of all tables present in the database and to create a complete export of the schema and data.
When you’re using the sqlite3 module in Python, you can’t directly use commands like .tables or .dump as you would in the command line interface. Instead, you can execute SQL queries programmatically to achieve similar results. To list all tables, you can run the query SELECT name FROM sqlite_master WHERE type='table';. This will give you all the table names in your database. For a complete export including schema and data, you would need to implement a custom function that iterates over these tables, using PRAGMA table_info(table_name) for schema details and SELECT * FROM table_name for the data itself.