Allow to export without quotes

[silvioprog]

Hello.

It would be nice to export metadata without quotes (menu File | Export | Database to SQL file...). For example, currently it export as:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS "countries" (
	"id"	INTEGER NOT NULL,
	"name"	VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL UNIQUE,
	PRIMARY KEY("id")
);

however, it would be nice any option to export as:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS countries (
	id	INTEGER NOT NULL,
	name	VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL UNIQUE,
	PRIMARY KEY(id)
);

Thank you!

[justinclift]

Shouldn't be too hard to make happen. What's the scenario where it'd be useful? 😄

[Z4us]

I’d like to discourage any effort Suppose someone has or makes a schema with keywords as table and/or column names so SQL statements like Select [select] from [from] where [where] is null; are valid. In sqlite [<identifier>] is an alternative for double quotes.

[mgrojo]

The difficult part is that in order to do it well, you have to check that the identifier doesn't have any unusual character or it isn't an SQL keyword, otherwise the result will be invalid.

Note that you can choose the quote character to use in "Edit > Preferences > SQL", just in case you prefer other style over the default SQL standard.

Edit: Just saw @Z4us' similar answer.

[justinclift]

Good point. Sounds like it could turn out to be tricky to implement well. 😦

[silvioprog]

It would be useful for who wants less verbose SQL, specially people using screen reader. Many other tools (SQLite Studio, DBeaver etc.) allows it, so IMHO SQLite Browser should allow it too.

I found the Edit > Preferences > SQL, but unfortunately it doesn't provide any option to disable the quoting. I really would like some option None there, because I'm removing the quotes manually all the time. I could use SQLite Studio/DBeaver to generate SQL without quotes, but their generated SQL uses an ugly formatting (lot of spaces, tabs, break lines or single line). SQLite Browser generates a very clean SQL, the only problem is the lot of quotes which we have to remove manually. (Quotes are useless for me, because my tables/fields names contains only "a..z" characters)

Below, the same table exported trough SQLite Studio, notice the lot of useless spaces, but no quotes:

CREATE TABLE companies (
    id         INTEGER       PRIMARY KEY
                             NOT NULL,
    name       VARCHAR (50) UNIQUE
                             NOT NULL
                             CHECK (LENGTH(name) > 2),
    address_id INTEGER       REFERENCES addresses (id) ON DELETE CASCADE
                                                       ON UPDATE CASCADE
                             NOT NULL
);

[sky5walk]

On the contrary, my fields intentionally carry myX(Y) requiring quoting.
Not sure if it would work, but add an export option for quoting which allows ""(empty space).

[chrisjlocke]

Couldn't you use a character you wouldn't use, eg, £ as the quote character, then a search/replace would remove all those £ characters...