SQLite - UPSERT not INSERT or REPLACE

Question

http   en wikipedia org wiki Upsert  Insert Update stored proc on SQL Server  Is there some clever way to do this in SQLite that I have not thought of   Basically I want to update three out of four columns if the record exists   If it does not exists I want to INSERT the record with the default  NUL  value for the fourth column   The ID is a primary key so there will only ever be one record to UPSERT    I am trying to avoid the overhead of SELECT in order to determin if I need to UPDATE or INSERT obviously   Suggestions     I cannot confirm that Syntax on the SQLite site for TABLE CREATE  I have not built a demo to test it  but It doesnt seem to be supported    If it was  I have three columns so it would actually look like   CREATE TABLE table1       id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ON CONFLICT REPLACE       Blob1 BLOB ON CONFLICT REPLACE       Blob2 BLOB ON CONFLICT REPLACE       Blob3 BLOB       but the first two blobs will not cause a conflict  only the ID would So I asusme Blob1 and Blob2 would not be replaced  as desired     UPDATEs in SQLite when binding data are a complete transaction  meaning  Each sent row to be updated requires   Prepare Bind Step Finalize statements unlike the INSERT which allows the use of the reset function  The life of a statement object goes something like this    Create the object using sqlite3 prepare v2    Bind values to host parameters using sqlite3 bind  interfaces  Run the SQL by calling sqlite3 step    Reset the statement using sqlite3 reset   then go back to step 2 and repeat  Destroy the statement object using sqlite3 finalize      UPDATE I am guessing is slow compared to INSERT  but how does it compare to SELECT using the Primary key   Perhaps I should use the select to read the 4th column  Blob3  and then use REPLACE to write a new record blending the original 4th Column with the new data for the first 3 columns

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SELECT COUNT    FROM table1 WHERE id   1    if COUNT      0  INSERT INTO table1 col1  col2  cole  VALUES var1 var2 var3     else if COUNT     gt  0  UPDATE table1 SET col1   var4  col2   var5  col3   var6 WHERE id   1

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Expanding on Aristotle   s answer you can SELECT from a dummy  singleton  table   a table of your own creation with a single row   This avoids some duplication   I ve also kept the example portable across MySQL and SQLite and used a  date added  column as an example of how you could set a column only the first time    REPLACE INTO page      id     name     title     content     author     date added   SELECT    old id      about       About this site      old content     42     IFNULL old date added  21 05 2013    FROM singleton  LEFT JOIN page AS old ON old name    about

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Following Aristotle Pagaltzis and the idea of COALESCE from Eric B   s answer  here it is an upsert option to update only few columns or insert full row if it does not exist   In this case  imagine that title and content should be updated  keeping the other old values when existing and inserting supplied ones when name not found   NOTE id is forced to be NULL when INSERT as it is supposed to be autoincrement  If it is just a generated primary key then COALESCE can also be used  see Aristotle Pagaltzis comment    WITH new  id  name  title  content  author       AS   VALUES 100   about    About this site    Whatever new content here   42    INSERT OR REPLACE INTO page  id  name  title  content  author  SELECT      old id  COALESCE old name  new name        new title  new content       COALESCE old author  new author  FROM new LEFT JOIN page AS old ON new name   old name    So the general rule would be  if you want to keep old values  use COALESCE  when you want to update values  use new fieldname

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Eric B   s answer is OK if you want to preserve just one or maybe two columns from the existing row  If you want to preserve a lot of columns  it gets too cumbersome fast   Here   s an approach that will scale well to any amount of columns on either side  To illustrate it I will assume the following schema    CREATE TABLE page        id      INTEGER PRIMARY KEY       name    TEXT UNIQUE       title   TEXT       content TEXT       author  INTEGER NOT NULL REFERENCES user  id        ts      TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT TIMESTAMP       Note in particular that name is the natural key of the row     id is used only for foreign keys  so the point is for SQLite to pick the ID value itself when inserting a new row  But when updating an existing row based on its name  I want it to continue to have the old ID value  obviously     I achieve a true UPSERT with the following construct    WITH new  name  title  author  AS   VALUES  about    About this site   42     INSERT OR REPLACE INTO page  id  name  title  content  author   SELECT old id  new name  new title  old content  new author  FROM new LEFT JOIN page AS old ON new name   old name    The exact form of this query can vary a bit  The key is the use of INSERT SELECT with a left outer join  to join an existing row to the new values   Here  if a row did not previously exist  old id will be NULL and SQLite will then assign an ID automatically  but if there already was such a row  old id will have an actual value and this will be reused  Which is exactly what I wanted   In fact this is very flexible  Note how the ts column is completely missing on all sides     because it has a DEFAULT value  SQLite will just do the right thing in any case  so I don   t have to take care of it myself   You can also include a column on both the new and old sides and then use e g  COALESCE new content  old content  in the outer SELECT to say    insert the new content if there was any  otherwise keep the old content        e g  if you are using a fixed query and are binding the new values with placeholders

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I realize this is an old thread but I ve been working in sqlite3 as of late and came up with this method which better suited my needs of dynamically generating parameterized queries   insert or ignore into  lt table gt   lt primaryKey gt    lt column1 gt    lt column2 gt        values  lt primaryKeyValue gt    lt value1 gt    lt value2 gt          update  lt table gt  set  lt column1 gt   lt value1 gt    lt column2 gt   lt value2 gt       where changes   0 and  lt primaryKey gt   lt primaryKeyValue gt      It s still 2 queries with a where clause on the update but seems to do the trick  I also have this vision in my head that sqlite can optimize away the update statement entirely if the call to changes   is greater than zero  Whether or not it actually does that is beyond my knowledge  but a man can dream can t he      For bonus points you can append this line which returns you the id of the row whether it be a newly inserted row or an existing row   select case changes   WHEN 0 THEN last insert rowid   else  lt primaryKeyValue gt  end

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This answer has be updated and so the comments below no longer apply   2018-05-18 STOP PRESS   UPSERT support in SQLite  UPSERT syntax was added to SQLite with version 3 24 0  pending     UPSERT is a special syntax addition to INSERT that causes the INSERT to behave as an UPDATE or a no-op if the INSERT would violate a uniqueness constraint  UPSERT is not standard SQL  UPSERT in SQLite follows the syntax established by PostgreSQL      alternatively   Another completely different way of doing this is  In my application I set my in memory rowID to be long MaxValue when I create the row in memory   MaxValue will never be used as an ID you will won t live long enough     Then if rowID is not that value then it must already be in the database so needs an UPDATE if it is MaxValue then it needs an insert  This is only useful if you can track the rowIDs in your app

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I think this may be what you are looking for  ON CONFLICT clause   If you define your table like this   CREATE TABLE table1       id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ON CONFLICT REPLACE       field1 TEXT        Now  if you do an INSERT with an id that already exists  SQLite automagically does UPDATE instead of INSERT   Hth

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The best approach I know is to do an update  followed by an insert  The  overhead of a select  is necessary  but it is not a terrible burden since you are searching on the primary key  which is fast   You should be able to modify the below statements with your table  amp  field names to do what you want   --first  update any matches UPDATE DESTINATION TABLE DT SET   MY FIELD1                   SELECT MY FIELD1               FROM SOURCE TABLE ST               WHERE ST PRIMARY KEY   DT PRIMARY KEY                   MY FIELD2                   SELECT MY FIELD2               FROM SOURCE TABLE ST               WHERE ST PRIMARY KEY   DT PRIMARY KEY                 WHERE EXISTS              SELECT ST2 PRIMARY KEY             FROM               SOURCE TABLE ST2               DESTINATION TABLE DT2             WHERE ST2 PRIMARY KEY   DT2 PRIMARY KEY                 --second  insert any non-matches INSERT INTO DESTINATION TABLE    MY FIELD1   MY FIELD2   SELECT   ST MY FIELD1   NULL AS MY FIELD2  --insert NULL into this field FROM   SOURCE TABLE ST WHERE NOT EXISTS                  SELECT DT2 PRIMARY KEY                 FROM DESTINATION TABLE DT2                 WHERE DT2 PRIMARY KEY   ST PRIMARY KEY

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Having just read this thread and been disappointed that it wasn t easy to just to this  UPSERT ing  I investigated further     You can actually do this directly and easily in SQLITE   Instead of using  INSERT INTO  Use  INSERT OR REPLACE INTO  This does exactly what you want it to do

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If someone wants to read my solution for SQLite in Cordova  I got this generic js method thanks to  david answer above   function    addOrUpdateRecords tableName  values  callback    get columnNames tableName  function  data        var columnNames   data      myDb transaction function  transaction            var query update               var query insert               var update string    UPDATE     tableName     SET            var insert string    INSERT INTO     tableName     SELECT            myDb transaction function  transaction                   Data from the array   data1      datan                               each values  function  index1  value1                    var sel str                       var upd str                       var remoteid                         each value1  function  index2  value2                        if  index2    0  remoteid   value2                      upd str   upd str   columnNames index2           value2                              sel str   sel str         value2                                              sel str   sel str substr 0  sel str length - 2                   sel str   sel str     WHERE NOT EXISTS SELECT changes   AS change FROM   tableName   WHERE change  lt  gt  0                     upd str   upd str substr 0  upd str length - 2                   upd str   upd str     WHERE remoteid        remoteid                                             query update   update string   upd str                  query insert   insert string   sel str                       Start transaction                  transaction executeSql query update                   transaction executeSql query insert                                                  function  error                callback  Error      error              function                  callback  Success                                So  first pick up the column names with this function   function get columnNames tableName  callback    myDb transaction function  transaction        var query exec    SELECT name  sql FROM sqlite master WHERE type  table  AND name       tableName            transaction executeSql query exec      function  tx  results            var columnParts   results rows item 0  sql replace                      g    1   split             RegEx         var columnNames               for  i in columnParts                if  typeof columnParts i       string                   columnNames push columnParts i  split      0                       callback columnNames                   Then build the transactions programmatically     Values  is an array you should build before and it represents the rows you want to insert or update into the table    remoteid  is the id I used as a reference  since I m syncing with my remote server   For the use of the SQLite Cordova plugin  please refer to the official link

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If someone wants to read my solution for SQLite in Cordova  I got this generic js method thanks to  david answer above   function    addOrUpdateRecords tableName  values  callback    get columnNames tableName  function  data        var columnNames   data      myDb transaction function  transaction            var query update               var query insert               var update string    UPDATE     tableName     SET            var insert string    INSERT INTO     tableName     SELECT            myDb transaction function  transaction                   Data from the array   data1      datan                               each values  function  index1  value1                    var sel str                       var upd str                       var remoteid                         each value1  function  index2  value2                        if  index2    0  remoteid   value2                      upd str   upd str   columnNames index2           value2                              sel str   sel str         value2                                              sel str   sel str substr 0  sel str length - 2                   sel str   sel str     WHERE NOT EXISTS SELECT changes   AS change FROM   tableName   WHERE change  lt  gt  0                     upd str   upd str substr 0  upd str length - 2                   upd str   upd str     WHERE remoteid        remoteid                                             query update   update string   upd str                  query insert   insert string   sel str                       Start transaction                  transaction executeSql query update                   transaction executeSql query insert                                                  function  error                callback  Error      error              function                  callback  Success                                So  first pick up the column names with this function   function get columnNames tableName  callback    myDb transaction function  transaction        var query exec    SELECT name  sql FROM sqlite master WHERE type  table  AND name       tableName            transaction executeSql query exec      function  tx  results            var columnParts   results rows item 0  sql replace                      g    1   split             RegEx         var columnNames               for  i in columnParts                if  typeof columnParts i       string                   columnNames push columnParts i  split      0                       callback columnNames                   Then build the transactions programmatically     Values  is an array you should build before and it represents the rows you want to insert or update into the table    remoteid  is the id I used as a reference  since I m syncing with my remote server   For the use of the SQLite Cordova plugin  please refer to the official link

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Updates from Bernhardt  You can indeed do an upsert in SQLite  it just looks a little different than you are used to  It would look something like  INSERT INTO table name  id  column1  column2   VALUES   quot youruuid quot    quot value12 quot    quot value2 quot   ON CONFLICT id  DO UPDATE  SET column1    quot value1 quot   column2    quot value2 quot

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Updates from Bernhardt  You can indeed do an upsert in SQLite  it just looks a little different than you are used to  It would look something like  INSERT INTO table name  id  column1  column2   VALUES   quot youruuid quot    quot value12 quot    quot value2 quot   ON CONFLICT id  DO UPDATE  SET column1    quot value1 quot   column2    quot value2 quot

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If you don t mind doing this in two operations   Steps   1  Add new items with  INSERT OR IGNORE   2  Update existing items with  UPDATE   The input to both steps is the same collection of new or update-able items  Works fine with existing items that need no changes  They will be updated  but with the same data and therefore net result is no changes   Sure  slower  etc  Inefficient  Yep   Easy to write the sql and maintain and understand it  Definitely    It s a trade-off to consider  Works great for small upserts  Works great for those that don t mind sacrificing efficiency for code maintainability

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Following Aristotle Pagaltzis and the idea of COALESCE from Eric B   s answer  here it is an upsert option to update only few columns or insert full row if it does not exist   In this case  imagine that title and content should be updated  keeping the other old values when existing and inserting supplied ones when name not found   NOTE id is forced to be NULL when INSERT as it is supposed to be autoincrement  If it is just a generated primary key then COALESCE can also be used  see Aristotle Pagaltzis comment    WITH new  id  name  title  content  author       AS   VALUES 100   about    About this site    Whatever new content here   42    INSERT OR REPLACE INTO page  id  name  title  content  author  SELECT      old id  COALESCE old name  new name        new title  new content       COALESCE old author  new author  FROM new LEFT JOIN page AS old ON new name   old name    So the general rule would be  if you want to keep old values  use COALESCE  when you want to update values  use new fieldname

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If you are generally doing updates I would       Begin a transaction  Do the update  Check the rowcount  If it is 0 do the insert Commit    If you are generally doing inserts I would    Begin a transaction  Try an insert Check for primary key violation error  if we got an error do the update  Commit    This way you avoid the select and you are transactionally sound on Sqlite

User · Answer

I think this may be what you are looking for  ON CONFLICT clause   If you define your table like this   CREATE TABLE table1       id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ON CONFLICT REPLACE       field1 TEXT        Now  if you do an INSERT with an id that already exists  SQLite automagically does UPDATE instead of INSERT   Hth

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INSERT OR REPLACE is NOT equivalent to  UPSERT    Say I have the table Employee with the fields id  name  and role   INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee   id    name    role   VALUES  1   John Foo    CEO   INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee   id    role   VALUES  1   code monkey     Boom  you ve lost the name of the employee number 1  SQLite has replaced it with a default value   The expected output of an UPSERT would be to change the role and to keep the name

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I realize this is an old thread but I ve been working in sqlite3 as of late and came up with this method which better suited my needs of dynamically generating parameterized queries   insert or ignore into  lt table gt   lt primaryKey gt    lt column1 gt    lt column2 gt        values  lt primaryKeyValue gt    lt value1 gt    lt value2 gt          update  lt table gt  set  lt column1 gt   lt value1 gt    lt column2 gt   lt value2 gt       where changes   0 and  lt primaryKey gt   lt primaryKeyValue gt      It s still 2 queries with a where clause on the update but seems to do the trick  I also have this vision in my head that sqlite can optimize away the update statement entirely if the call to changes   is greater than zero  Whether or not it actually does that is beyond my knowledge  but a man can dream can t he      For bonus points you can append this line which returns you the id of the row whether it be a newly inserted row or an existing row   select case changes   WHEN 0 THEN last insert rowid   else  lt primaryKeyValue gt  end

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Assuming three columns in the table  ID  NAME  ROLE    BAD  This will insert or replace all columns with new values for ID 1   INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee  id  name  role     VALUES  1   John Foo    CEO        BAD  This will insert or replace 2 of the columns    the NAME column will be set to NULL or the default value   INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee  id  role     VALUES  1   code monkey        GOOD  Use SQLite On conflict clause UPSERT support in SQLite  UPSERT syntax was added to SQLite with version 3 24 0   UPSERT is a special syntax addition to INSERT that causes the INSERT to behave as an UPDATE or a no-op if the INSERT would violate a uniqueness constraint  UPSERT is not standard SQL  UPSERT in SQLite follows the syntax established by PostgreSQL      GOOD but tendous  This will update 2 of the columns  When ID 1 exists  the NAME will be unaffected  When ID 1 does not exist  the name will be the default  NULL    INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee  id  role  name     VALUES    1                code monkey                SELECT name FROM Employee WHERE id   1                 This will update 2 of the columns  When ID 1 exists  the ROLE will be unaffected  When ID 1 does not exist  the role will be set to  Benchwarmer  instead of the default value   INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee  id  name  role     VALUES    1                Susan Bar               COALESCE  SELECT role FROM Employee WHERE id   1    Benchwarmer

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Having just read this thread and been disappointed that it wasn t easy to just to this  UPSERT ing  I investigated further     You can actually do this directly and easily in SQLITE   Instead of using  INSERT INTO  Use  INSERT OR REPLACE INTO  This does exactly what you want it to do

User · Answer

SELECT COUNT    FROM table1 WHERE id   1    if COUNT      0  INSERT INTO table1 col1  col2  cole  VALUES var1 var2 var3     else if COUNT     gt  0  UPDATE table1 SET col1   var4  col2   var5  col3   var6 WHERE id   1

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The best approach I know is to do an update  followed by an insert  The  overhead of a select  is necessary  but it is not a terrible burden since you are searching on the primary key  which is fast   You should be able to modify the below statements with your table  amp  field names to do what you want   --first  update any matches UPDATE DESTINATION TABLE DT SET   MY FIELD1                   SELECT MY FIELD1               FROM SOURCE TABLE ST               WHERE ST PRIMARY KEY   DT PRIMARY KEY                   MY FIELD2                   SELECT MY FIELD2               FROM SOURCE TABLE ST               WHERE ST PRIMARY KEY   DT PRIMARY KEY                 WHERE EXISTS              SELECT ST2 PRIMARY KEY             FROM               SOURCE TABLE ST2               DESTINATION TABLE DT2             WHERE ST2 PRIMARY KEY   DT2 PRIMARY KEY                 --second  insert any non-matches INSERT INTO DESTINATION TABLE    MY FIELD1   MY FIELD2   SELECT   ST MY FIELD1   NULL AS MY FIELD2  --insert NULL into this field FROM   SOURCE TABLE ST WHERE NOT EXISTS                  SELECT DT2 PRIMARY KEY                 FROM DESTINATION TABLE DT2                 WHERE DT2 PRIMARY KEY   ST PRIMARY KEY

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This answer has be updated and so the comments below no longer apply   2018-05-18 STOP PRESS   UPSERT support in SQLite  UPSERT syntax was added to SQLite with version 3 24 0  pending     UPSERT is a special syntax addition to INSERT that causes the INSERT to behave as an UPDATE or a no-op if the INSERT would violate a uniqueness constraint  UPSERT is not standard SQL  UPSERT in SQLite follows the syntax established by PostgreSQL      alternatively   Another completely different way of doing this is  In my application I set my in memory rowID to be long MaxValue when I create the row in memory   MaxValue will never be used as an ID you will won t live long enough     Then if rowID is not that value then it must already be in the database so needs an UPDATE if it is MaxValue then it needs an insert  This is only useful if you can track the rowIDs in your app

User · Answer

INSERT OR REPLACE is NOT equivalent to  UPSERT    Say I have the table Employee with the fields id  name  and role   INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee   id    name    role   VALUES  1   John Foo    CEO   INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee   id    role   VALUES  1   code monkey     Boom  you ve lost the name of the employee number 1  SQLite has replaced it with a default value   The expected output of an UPSERT would be to change the role and to keep the name

User · Answer

I think this may be what you are looking for  ON CONFLICT clause   If you define your table like this   CREATE TABLE table1       id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ON CONFLICT REPLACE       field1 TEXT        Now  if you do an INSERT with an id that already exists  SQLite automagically does UPDATE instead of INSERT   Hth

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Here is a solution that really is an UPSERT  UPDATE or INSERT  instead of an INSERT OR REPLACE  which works differently in many situations    It works like this  1  Try to update if a record with the same Id exists  2  If the update did not change any rows  NOT EXISTS SELECT changes   AS change FROM Contact WHERE change  lt  gt  0    then insert the record   So either an existing record was updated or an insert will be performed   The important detail is to use the changes   SQL function to check if the update statement hit any existing records and only perform the insert statement if it did not hit any record   One thing to mention is that the changes   function does not return changes performed by lower-level triggers  see http   sqlite org lang corefunc html changes   so be sure to take that into account   Here is the SQL     Test update   --Create sample table and records  and drop the table if it already exists  DROP TABLE IF EXISTS Contact  CREATE TABLE  Contact       Id  INTEGER PRIMARY KEY      Name  TEXT    INSERT INTO Contact  Id  Name  VALUES  1   Mike    INSERT INTO Contact  Id  Name  VALUES  2   John     -- Try to update an existing record UPDATE Contact SET Name    Bob  WHERE Id   2   -- If no record was changed by the update  meaning no record with the same Id existed   insert the record INSERT INTO Contact  Id  Name  SELECT 2   Bob  WHERE NOT EXISTS SELECT changes   AS change FROM Contact WHERE change  lt  gt  0    --See the result SELECT   FROM Contact    Test insert   --Create sample table and records  and drop the table if it already exists  DROP TABLE IF EXISTS Contact  CREATE TABLE  Contact       Id  INTEGER PRIMARY KEY      Name  TEXT    INSERT INTO Contact  Id  Name  VALUES  1   Mike    INSERT INTO Contact  Id  Name  VALUES  2   John     -- Try to update an existing record UPDATE Contact SET Name    Bob  WHERE Id   3   -- If no record was changed by the update  meaning no record with the same Id existed   insert the record INSERT INTO Contact  Id  Name  SELECT 3   Bob  WHERE NOT EXISTS SELECT changes   AS change FROM Contact WHERE change  lt  gt  0    --See the result SELECT   FROM Contact

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The best approach I know is to do an update  followed by an insert  The  overhead of a select  is necessary  but it is not a terrible burden since you are searching on the primary key  which is fast   You should be able to modify the below statements with your table  amp  field names to do what you want   --first  update any matches UPDATE DESTINATION TABLE DT SET   MY FIELD1                   SELECT MY FIELD1               FROM SOURCE TABLE ST               WHERE ST PRIMARY KEY   DT PRIMARY KEY                   MY FIELD2                   SELECT MY FIELD2               FROM SOURCE TABLE ST               WHERE ST PRIMARY KEY   DT PRIMARY KEY                 WHERE EXISTS              SELECT ST2 PRIMARY KEY             FROM               SOURCE TABLE ST2               DESTINATION TABLE DT2             WHERE ST2 PRIMARY KEY   DT2 PRIMARY KEY                 --second  insert any non-matches INSERT INTO DESTINATION TABLE    MY FIELD1   MY FIELD2   SELECT   ST MY FIELD1   NULL AS MY FIELD2  --insert NULL into this field FROM   SOURCE TABLE ST WHERE NOT EXISTS                  SELECT DT2 PRIMARY KEY                 FROM DESTINATION TABLE DT2                 WHERE DT2 PRIMARY KEY   ST PRIMARY KEY

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Assuming three columns in the table  ID  NAME  ROLE    BAD  This will insert or replace all columns with new values for ID 1   INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee  id  name  role     VALUES  1   John Foo    CEO        BAD  This will insert or replace 2 of the columns    the NAME column will be set to NULL or the default value   INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee  id  role     VALUES  1   code monkey        GOOD  Use SQLite On conflict clause UPSERT support in SQLite  UPSERT syntax was added to SQLite with version 3 24 0   UPSERT is a special syntax addition to INSERT that causes the INSERT to behave as an UPDATE or a no-op if the INSERT would violate a uniqueness constraint  UPSERT is not standard SQL  UPSERT in SQLite follows the syntax established by PostgreSQL      GOOD but tendous  This will update 2 of the columns  When ID 1 exists  the NAME will be unaffected  When ID 1 does not exist  the name will be the default  NULL    INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee  id  role  name     VALUES    1                code monkey                SELECT name FROM Employee WHERE id   1                 This will update 2 of the columns  When ID 1 exists  the ROLE will be unaffected  When ID 1 does not exist  the role will be set to  Benchwarmer  instead of the default value   INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee  id  name  role     VALUES    1                Susan Bar               COALESCE  SELECT role FROM Employee WHERE id   1    Benchwarmer

User · Answer

The best approach I know is to do an update  followed by an insert  The  overhead of a select  is necessary  but it is not a terrible burden since you are searching on the primary key  which is fast   You should be able to modify the below statements with your table  amp  field names to do what you want   --first  update any matches UPDATE DESTINATION TABLE DT SET   MY FIELD1                   SELECT MY FIELD1               FROM SOURCE TABLE ST               WHERE ST PRIMARY KEY   DT PRIMARY KEY                   MY FIELD2                   SELECT MY FIELD2               FROM SOURCE TABLE ST               WHERE ST PRIMARY KEY   DT PRIMARY KEY                 WHERE EXISTS              SELECT ST2 PRIMARY KEY             FROM               SOURCE TABLE ST2               DESTINATION TABLE DT2             WHERE ST2 PRIMARY KEY   DT2 PRIMARY KEY                 --second  insert any non-matches INSERT INTO DESTINATION TABLE    MY FIELD1   MY FIELD2   SELECT   ST MY FIELD1   NULL AS MY FIELD2  --insert NULL into this field FROM   SOURCE TABLE ST WHERE NOT EXISTS                  SELECT DT2 PRIMARY KEY                 FROM DESTINATION TABLE DT2                 WHERE DT2 PRIMARY KEY   ST PRIMARY KEY

User · Answer

If you are generally doing updates I would       Begin a transaction  Do the update  Check the rowcount  If it is 0 do the insert Commit    If you are generally doing inserts I would    Begin a transaction  Try an insert Check for primary key violation error  if we got an error do the update  Commit    This way you avoid the select and you are transactionally sound on Sqlite

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If you are generally doing updates I would       Begin a transaction  Do the update  Check the rowcount  If it is 0 do the insert Commit    If you are generally doing inserts I would    Begin a transaction  Try an insert Check for primary key violation error  if we got an error do the update  Commit    This way you avoid the select and you are transactionally sound on Sqlite

User · Answer

Beginning with version 3 24 0 UPSERT is supported by SQLite  From the documentation   UPSERT is a special syntax addition to INSERT that causes the INSERT to behave as an UPDATE or a no-op if the INSERT would violate a uniqueness constraint  UPSERT is not standard SQL  UPSERT in SQLite follows the syntax established by PostgreSQL  UPSERT syntax was added to SQLite with version 3 24 0  pending   An UPSERT is an ordinary INSERT statement that is followed by the special ON CONFLICT clause   Image source  https   www sqlite org images syntax upsert-clause gif

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Expanding on Aristotle   s answer you can SELECT from a dummy  singleton  table   a table of your own creation with a single row   This avoids some duplication   I ve also kept the example portable across MySQL and SQLite and used a  date added  column as an example of how you could set a column only the first time    REPLACE INTO page      id     name     title     content     author     date added   SELECT    old id      about       About this site      old content     42     IFNULL old date added  21 05 2013    FROM singleton  LEFT JOIN page AS old ON old name    about

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I think this may be what you are looking for  ON CONFLICT clause   If you define your table like this   CREATE TABLE table1       id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ON CONFLICT REPLACE       field1 TEXT        Now  if you do an INSERT with an id that already exists  SQLite automagically does UPDATE instead of INSERT   Hth

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This method remixes a few of the other methods from answer in for this question and incorporates the use of CTE  Common Table Expressions   I will introduce the query then explain why I did what I did   I would like to change the last name for employee 300 to DAVIS if there is an employee 300  Otherwise  I will add a new employee   Table Name  employees Columns  id  first name  last name  The query is   INSERT OR REPLACE INTO employees  employee id  first name  last name  WITH registered employees AS   --CTE for checking if the row exists or not     SELECT --this is needed to ensure that the null row comes second               FROM           SELECT --an existing row                       FROM             employees         WHERE             employee id    300           UNION          SELECT --a dummy row if the original cannot be found             NULL AS employee id              NULL AS first name              NULL AS last name           ORDER BY         employee id IS NULL --we want nulls to be last     LIMIT 1 --we only want one row from this statement   SELECT --this is where you provide defaults for what you would like to insert     registered employees employee id  --if this is null the SQLite default will be used     COALESCE registered employees first name   SALLY         DAVIS  FROM     registered employees     Basically  I used the CTE to reduce the number of times the select statement has to be used to determine default values  Since this is a CTE  we just select the columns we want from the table and the INSERT statement uses this   Now you can decide what defaults you want to use by replacing the nulls  in the COALESCE function with what the values should be

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Beginning with version 3 24 0 UPSERT is supported by SQLite  From the documentation   UPSERT is a special syntax addition to INSERT that causes the INSERT to behave as an UPDATE or a no-op if the INSERT would violate a uniqueness constraint  UPSERT is not standard SQL  UPSERT in SQLite follows the syntax established by PostgreSQL  UPSERT syntax was added to SQLite with version 3 24 0  pending   An UPSERT is an ordinary INSERT statement that is followed by the special ON CONFLICT clause   Image source  https   www sqlite org images syntax upsert-clause gif

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Eric B   s answer is OK if you want to preserve just one or maybe two columns from the existing row  If you want to preserve a lot of columns  it gets too cumbersome fast   Here   s an approach that will scale well to any amount of columns on either side  To illustrate it I will assume the following schema    CREATE TABLE page        id      INTEGER PRIMARY KEY       name    TEXT UNIQUE       title   TEXT       content TEXT       author  INTEGER NOT NULL REFERENCES user  id        ts      TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT TIMESTAMP       Note in particular that name is the natural key of the row     id is used only for foreign keys  so the point is for SQLite to pick the ID value itself when inserting a new row  But when updating an existing row based on its name  I want it to continue to have the old ID value  obviously     I achieve a true UPSERT with the following construct    WITH new  name  title  author  AS   VALUES  about    About this site   42     INSERT OR REPLACE INTO page  id  name  title  content  author   SELECT old id  new name  new title  old content  new author  FROM new LEFT JOIN page AS old ON new name   old name    The exact form of this query can vary a bit  The key is the use of INSERT SELECT with a left outer join  to join an existing row to the new values   Here  if a row did not previously exist  old id will be NULL and SQLite will then assign an ID automatically  but if there already was such a row  old id will have an actual value and this will be reused  Which is exactly what I wanted   In fact this is very flexible  Note how the ts column is completely missing on all sides     because it has a DEFAULT value  SQLite will just do the right thing in any case  so I don   t have to take care of it myself   You can also include a column on both the new and old sides and then use e g  COALESCE new content  old content  in the outer SELECT to say    insert the new content if there was any  otherwise keep the old content        e g  if you are using a fixed query and are binding the new values with placeholders

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If you don t mind doing this in two operations   Steps   1  Add new items with  INSERT OR IGNORE   2  Update existing items with  UPDATE   The input to both steps is the same collection of new or update-able items  Works fine with existing items that need no changes  They will be updated  but with the same data and therefore net result is no changes   Sure  slower  etc  Inefficient  Yep   Easy to write the sql and maintain and understand it  Definitely    It s a trade-off to consider  Works great for small upserts  Works great for those that don t mind sacrificing efficiency for code maintainability

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This method remixes a few of the other methods from answer in for this question and incorporates the use of CTE  Common Table Expressions   I will introduce the query then explain why I did what I did   I would like to change the last name for employee 300 to DAVIS if there is an employee 300  Otherwise  I will add a new employee   Table Name  employees Columns  id  first name  last name  The query is   INSERT OR REPLACE INTO employees  employee id  first name  last name  WITH registered employees AS   --CTE for checking if the row exists or not     SELECT --this is needed to ensure that the null row comes second               FROM           SELECT --an existing row                       FROM             employees         WHERE             employee id    300           UNION          SELECT --a dummy row if the original cannot be found             NULL AS employee id              NULL AS first name              NULL AS last name           ORDER BY         employee id IS NULL --we want nulls to be last     LIMIT 1 --we only want one row from this statement   SELECT --this is where you provide defaults for what you would like to insert     registered employees employee id  --if this is null the SQLite default will be used     COALESCE registered employees first name   SALLY         DAVIS  FROM     registered employees     Basically  I used the CTE to reduce the number of times the select statement has to be used to determine default values  Since this is a CTE  we just select the columns we want from the table and the INSERT statement uses this   Now you can decide what defaults you want to use by replacing the nulls  in the COALESCE function with what the values should be

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Here is a solution that really is an UPSERT  UPDATE or INSERT  instead of an INSERT OR REPLACE  which works differently in many situations    It works like this  1  Try to update if a record with the same Id exists  2  If the update did not change any rows  NOT EXISTS SELECT changes   AS change FROM Contact WHERE change  lt  gt  0    then insert the record   So either an existing record was updated or an insert will be performed   The important detail is to use the changes   SQL function to check if the update statement hit any existing records and only perform the insert statement if it did not hit any record   One thing to mention is that the changes   function does not return changes performed by lower-level triggers  see http   sqlite org lang corefunc html changes   so be sure to take that into account   Here is the SQL     Test update   --Create sample table and records  and drop the table if it already exists  DROP TABLE IF EXISTS Contact  CREATE TABLE  Contact       Id  INTEGER PRIMARY KEY      Name  TEXT    INSERT INTO Contact  Id  Name  VALUES  1   Mike    INSERT INTO Contact  Id  Name  VALUES  2   John     -- Try to update an existing record UPDATE Contact SET Name    Bob  WHERE Id   2   -- If no record was changed by the update  meaning no record with the same Id existed   insert the record INSERT INTO Contact  Id  Name  SELECT 2   Bob  WHERE NOT EXISTS SELECT changes   AS change FROM Contact WHERE change  lt  gt  0    --See the result SELECT   FROM Contact    Test insert   --Create sample table and records  and drop the table if it already exists  DROP TABLE IF EXISTS Contact  CREATE TABLE  Contact       Id  INTEGER PRIMARY KEY      Name  TEXT    INSERT INTO Contact  Id  Name  VALUES  1   Mike    INSERT INTO Contact  Id  Name  VALUES  2   John     -- Try to update an existing record UPDATE Contact SET Name    Bob  WHERE Id   3   -- If no record was changed by the update  meaning no record with the same Id existed   insert the record INSERT INTO Contact  Id  Name  SELECT 3   Bob  WHERE NOT EXISTS SELECT changes   AS change FROM Contact WHERE change  lt  gt  0    --See the result SELECT   FROM Contact

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If you are generally doing updates I would       Begin a transaction  Do the update  Check the rowcount  If it is 0 do the insert Commit    If you are generally doing inserts I would    Begin a transaction  Try an insert Check for primary key violation error  if we got an error do the update  Commit    This way you avoid the select and you are transactionally sound on Sqlite

[sql] SQLite - UPSERT not INSERT or REPLACE

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[sql] SQLite - UPSERT *not* INSERT or REPLACE

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[sql] SQLite - UPSERT not INSERT or REPLACE