Tutorial : How to access a Android database by using a command line.

When your start dealing with a database in your program, it is really important and useful to be able to access it directly, outside your program, to check what the program has just done, and to debug.

And it is important also on Android.

Here is how to do that :

1) Launch the emulator (or connect your real device to your PC ). I usually launch one of my program from Eclipse for this.

2) Launch a command prompt in the android tools directory.

3) type adb shell.

This will launch an unix shell on your emulator / connected device.

4) go to the directory where your database is :

cd data/data

here you have the list of all the applications on your device

Go in your application directory ( beware, Unix is case sensitive !! )

cd com.alocaly.LetterGame

and descend in your databases directory :

cd databases

Here you can find all your databases. In my case, there is only one ( now ) : SCORE_DB

5) Launch sqlite on the database you want to check / change :

sqlite3 SCORE_DB

From here, you can check what tables are present :

.tables

6) enter any SQL instruction you want :

select * from Score;

This is quite simple, but every time I need it, I don't know where to find it.