ORMLite with Android

This tutorial will guide you how to implement ORMLite (a very light weight, open source, Android compatible ORM) in an Android project. Android supports SQLite database and writing database queries can create a lot of boilerplate code and can be really difficult to debug. I was looking for some sort of ORM library for android. I came around few of them. I decided to give ORMLite a shot. The library is very stable and uses annotations. It was really easy to implement everything so I decided to stick with it.

What are the benefits you may achieve compare to conventional way of using SQLite from Android. You will learn to build an app with ORMLite that allows you to store and view data from a database. So lets begin…

Model

To use ORMLite, you first need to create your model classes. A sample model class would like this.

Open below link to view source

EmployeeDetails.java

Database Helper

It is the most important file from the ORMLite implementation point of view, which consists the complete logic of database file creation, accessibility etc. Below are the key points of this file:

• Database Name & version:  Keep the database name and version as shown in the example
• onCreate(): This method should include all the table creation statements and other first time configuration logics.
• onUpgrade(): onCreate() method executes only once i.e. when the application is running for the first time, so in case application needs any update in the database (e.g. creation of new table, insertion of a new column in an existing table etc.), this method needs to incorporate all those logics, so application doesn’t crash after getting upgraded.
• DAO: DAOs are the one of the most important components in ORMLite ecosystem as those are the only handle to access database tables. So, every table should expose a DAO, so application can access this table when required.

Open below link to view source

DatabaseHelper.java