Binding your custom database to Android applications & data layer implementation

Creating my first several applications for Android, I surprisingly found out that there aren't so many step-by-step resources about how to create a database and use it in your application. Here is a walkthrough for how to connect your Android application to SQLite database.

As a first step, I will show you how to download and create database using any SQLite Manager. Next step is creating data structure and include it in the Android application. Final step is to implement a data access layer to retrieve and update data, all the CRUD operations.

There are plenty of SQLite Database Managers. My favourite so far is Firefox  SQLite Manager add-on:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sqlite-manager/

You can also use sqlite admin or SQLite Database Browser or any other choice of yours.

Creating a database is fairly straightforward with SQLite Manager:

Then name the database and select a filepath to save the database file. Next, let's create a table:

Now create your tables (and views, indexes & triggers) according to your requirements.

Since we have created the database, it's time to include it in our Android application.

Copy (or Database -> Close and drag & drop) the database file SQLite into the assets folder in your project:

After this point, all we have to do is to implement a database adapter and build a data access layer over it to make our database accessible from the application. Android SDK has already built-in support for SQLite database, so you don't have to worry about it. We can implement database adapter using android.database.sqlite library.

And as the final step, here is how to implement a data access layer based on database adapter we've just implemented: