Android: sqlite: cursor: getColumnIndex

Question

I've got a fairly complicated query (multiple joins) on a normalized sqlite database. The query does a SELECT * to enable some automated attribute selection logic (so I can't eliminate the "*")

The problem I am having is that my result set contains multiple columns with the same attribute name. For example, one attribute common to each table in the query is "_id". When I go to call "cursor.getColumnIndex("_id")" the value returned is always the index of the last "_id" attribute in the result set column list (i.e. not the one I want). I'd love to be able to use my SQL alias prefixes like cursor.getColumnIndex("A._id") but that is not working.

QUESTIONs

It appears that cursor.getColumnIndex(AttributeName) returns the index of the last "AttributeName". Can anyone confirm this? Also, any suggestions on how return the index of the 1st attribute with "AttributeName"? or better the Xth attribute having "AttributeName"?

Answer 1

You can do this:

SELECT _id as myID, * FROM myTable

This means the _id field will appear twice for each table in your results, but one of the two columns will have a unique name which should enable you to find it.

Answer 2

Unfortunately the documentation doesn't mention anything about what you need to do, so I am assuming it cannot be done.

However, you say

The query does a SELECT * to enable some automated attribute selection logic (so I can't eliminate the "*")

What is this 'automated attribute selection logic' you speak of? Why do you require this?

Answer 3

An oder solution is:

"SELECT tableName.columnName FROM tableName"

and then do the same with:

cursor.getColumnIndex("tableName.columnName");

This is what MS-Access does. You can create a query and then see the generated SQL code (simply going to 'view' menu and selecting 'SQL view' from your query dessign window)