how to set the primary key when writing a pandas dataframe to a sqlite database table using df.to_sql

Question

I have created a sqlite database using pandas df.to_sql however accessing it seems considerably slower than just reading in the 500mb csv file.

I need to:

Answer 1

Building on Chris Guarino's answer, here's some functions that provide a more general solution. See the example at the bottom for how to use them.

import re

def get_create_table_string(tablename, connection):
    sql = """
    select * from sqlite_master where name = "{}" and type = "table"
    """.format(tablename) 
    result = connection.execute(sql)

    create_table_string = result.fetchmany()[0][4]
    return create_table_string

def add_pk_to_create_table_string(create_table_string, colname):
    regex = "(\n.+{}[^,]+)(,)".format(colname)
    return re.sub(regex, "\\1 PRIMARY KEY,",  create_table_string, count=1)

def add_pk_to_sqlite_table(tablename, index_column, connection):
    cts = get_create_table_string(tablename, connection)
    cts = add_pk_to_create_table_string(cts, index_column)
    template = """
    BEGIN TRANSACTION;
        ALTER TABLE {tablename} RENAME TO {tablename}_old_;

        {cts};

        INSERT INTO {tablename} SELECT * FROM {tablename}_old_;

        DROP TABLE {tablename}_old_;

    COMMIT TRANSACTION;
    """

    create_and_drop_sql = template.format(tablename = tablename, cts = cts)
    connection.executescript(create_and_drop_sql)

# Example:

# import pandas as pd 
# import sqlite3

# df = pd.DataFrame({"a": [1,2,3], "b": [2,3,4]})
# con = sqlite3.connect("deleteme.db")
# df.to_sql("df", con, if_exists="replace")

# add_pk_to_sqlite_table("df", "index", con)
# r = con.execute("select sql from sqlite_master where name = 'df' and type = 'table'")
# print(r.fetchone()[0])

There is a gist of this code here