Use SQLite asynchronously

  • 10 minutes

If you run queries on a database in a synchronous way, it can lead to performance problems and unresponsive apps. SQLite-net has an asynchronous API that you can use to keep your application responsive.

In this unit, you'll learn how to use the SQLite-net asynchronous API to ensure that your application remains highly responsive.

Understand asynchronous queries

Up until this point, everything you've done has been executed on the UI thread. However, to build a highly responsive mobile application, you want to do things a little differently. If you run database operations on the UI thread, it might cause the UI to freeze if the operation takes a long time to complete.

To solve this problem, SQLite-net includes an asynchronous API through the SQLiteAsyncConnection class. For example, to create a table asynchronously, you could use the CreateTableAsync method:

var conn = new SQLiteAsyncConnection(dbPath);
await conn.CreateTableAsync<User>();

Perform async operations with SQLite-net

The SQLiteAsyncConnection class exposes similar operations as its synchronous counterpart. However, the operations are all task-based for background usage.

The common available asynchronous operations include:

  • CreateTableAsync: Creates a table based on the indicated class

  • DropTableAsync: Drops the table that correlates to the indicated class

  • GetAsync: Gets the record in the table that correlates to the indicated class, and matches the primary key that's passed into the constructor

  • InsertAsync: Inserts a new record by using the item that's passed into the constructor

  • UpdateAsync: Updates an existing record by using the item that's passed into the constructor

  • DeleteAsync: Deletes the record in the table that maps to the indicated class, and matches the primary key that's passed into the constructor

  • QueryAsync: Runs a direct SQL query and returns an object

  • ExecuteAsync: Runs a direct SQL query and returns the number of affected rows

  • ExecuteScalarAsync: Runs a direct SQL query and returns the single result

  • ToListAsync: Executes the Table method asynchronously

The following code shows an example of how to use the ToListAsync method to retrieve records asynchronously:

SQLiteAsyncConnection conn;
ObservableCollection<User> userList;  // Bound to UI
...
public async Task AddAllUsersAsync()
{
    List<User> users = await conn.Table<User>().ToListAsync();
    // Must be on UI thread here!
    foreach (var u in users)
        userList.Add(u);
}

In this example, the ToListAsync method fetches all the users from the database asynchronously. If you use this method, your UI remains responsive even if there's a large set of users in the database.