Since @mateusza did not provide an example, I've made one:
Suppose you have this table:
CREATE TABLE [Customer] (
[name] TEXT,
[street] TEXT,
[city] TEXT);
Now you want to move street and city into a separate table Address, so you'll end up with two tables:
CREATE TABLE [Customer2] (
[name] TEXT,
[addr] INTEGER);
CREATE TABLE [Address] (
[rowid] INTEGER NOT NULL,
[street] TEXT,
[city] TEXT,
PRIMARY KEY ([rowid])
);
(For this example, I'm doing the conversion in the same database. You'd probably use two DBs, converting one into the other, with an SQL ATTACH command.)
Now we create a view (which imitates our original table using the new tables) and the trigger:
CREATE VIEW Customer1 (name, street, city) AS
SELECT C.name, A.street, A.city FROM Customer2 AS C
JOIN Address as A ON (C.addr == A.rowid);
CREATE TEMP TRIGGER TempTrig INSTEAD OF INSERT ON Customer1 FOR EACH ROW BEGIN
INSERT INTO Address (street, city) SELECT NEW.street, NEW.city;
INSERT INTO Customer2 (addr, name) SELECT last_insert_rowid(), NEW.name;
END;
Now you can copy the table rows:
INSERT INTO Customer1 (name, street, city) SELECT name, street, city FROM Customer;
The above is a simplified case where you'd only move some data into a single new table.
A more complex (and more general) case is where you want to...
- Separate your original table's columns into several foreign tables, and
- Have unique entries in the foreign tables (that's usually the reason why you'd refactor your table).
This adds some additional challenges:
- You'll end up inserting into multiple tables before you can insert their rowids into the table with the referencing rowids. This requires storing the results of each
INSERT's last_insert_rowid() into a temporary table.
- If the value already exists in the foreign table, its rowid must be stored instead of the one from the (non-executed) insertion operation.
Here's a complete solution for this. It manages a database of music records, constisting of a song's name, album title and artist name.
-- Original table
CREATE TABLE [Song] (
[title] TEXT,
[album] TEXT,
[artist] TEXT
);
-- Refactored tables
CREATE TABLE [Song2] (
[title] TEXT,
[album_rowid] INTEGER,
[artist_rowid] INTEGER
);
CREATE TABLE [Album] (
[rowid] INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
[title] TEXT UNIQUE
);
CREATE TABLE [Artist] (
[rowid] INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
[name] TEXT UNIQUE
);
-- Fill with sample data
INSERT INTO Song VALUES ("Hunting Girl", "Songs From The Wood", "Jethro Tull");
INSERT INTO Song VALUES ("Acres Wild", "Heavy Horses", "Jethro Tull");
INSERT INTO Song VALUES ("Broadford Bazar", "Heavy Horses", "Jethro Tull");
INSERT INTO Song VALUES ("Statue of Liberty", "White Music", "XTC");
INSERT INTO Song VALUES ("Standing In For Joe", "Wasp Star", "XTC");
INSERT INTO Song VALUES ("Velvet Green", "Songs From The Wood", "Jethro Tull");
-- Conversion starts here
CREATE TEMP TABLE [TempRowIDs] (
[album_id] INTEGER,
[artist_id] INTEGER
);
CREATE VIEW Song1 (title, album, artist) AS
SELECT Song2.title, Album.title, Artist.name
FROM Song2
JOIN Album ON (Song2.album_rowid == Album.rowid)
JOIN Artist ON (Song2.artist_rowid == Artist.rowid);
CREATE TEMP TRIGGER TempTrig INSTEAD OF INSERT ON Song1 FOR EACH ROW BEGIN
INSERT OR IGNORE INTO Album (title) SELECT NEW.album;
UPDATE TempRowIDs SET album_id = (SELECT COALESCE (
(SELECT rowid FROM Album WHERE changes()==0 AND title==NEW.album), last_insert_rowid()
) ) WHERE rowid==1;
INSERT OR IGNORE INTO Artist (name) SELECT NEW.artist;
UPDATE TempRowIDs SET artist_id = (SELECT COALESCE (
(SELECT rowid FROM Artist WHERE changes()==0 AND name==NEW.artist), last_insert_rowid()
) ) WHERE rowid==1;
INSERT INTO Song2 (title, album_rowid, artist_rowid) SELECT
NEW.title, (SELECT album_id FROM TempRowIDs), (SELECT artist_id FROM TempRowIDs);
END;
INSERT INTO TempRowIDs DEFAULT VALUES;
INSERT INTO Song1 (title, album, artist) SELECT title, album, artist FROM Song;
DROP TRIGGER TempTrig;
DROP TABLE TempRowIDs;
-- Conversion ends here
-- Print results
SELECT * FROM Song;
SELECT * FROM Song1;
-- Check if original and copy are identical (https://stackoverflow.com/a/13865679/43615)
SELECT CASE WHEN (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM (SELECT * FROM Song UNION SELECT * FROM Song1)) == (SELECT COUNT() FROM Song) THEN 'Success' ELSE 'Failure' END;
Note that this example has one potential issue: If the constraints on the foreign table are more complex, the SELECT rowid FROM search for the existing entry needs to be updated accordingly. Ideally, SQLite should provide a way to determine the conflicting rowid somehow, but it doesn't, unfortunately (see this related question).
