Quick start

This page gets a database open, migrated, written to, and queried in a Capacitor app on any supported platform.

Prerequisites

• A Capacitor 8+ app (@capacitor/core and @capacitor/ios/@capacitor/android as needed).
• For Electron targets: Electron 40+ (bundles Node 24+, which ships node:sqlite).
• For Web targets: your dev/prod server must send cross-origin isolation headers — see Installation → Web.

Install

npm install @devioarts/capacitor-sqlite
npx cap sync

npx cap sync copies the iOS/Android native sources and (for Electron) wires up the plugin's Electron entry points into your Capacitor project.

Check availability

isAvailable() reports whether SQLite can be used on the current platform. ':memory:' databases still work even when it reports false (for example, Web without OPFS support).

import { CapacitorSqlite } from '@devioarts/capacitor-sqlite';

const availability = await CapacitorSqlite.isAvailable();
if (!availability.success || !availability.data.available) {
  throw new Error(availability.success ? 'SQLite is not available' : availability.error.message);
}

Open a database and run a migration

open() reads PRAGMA user_version and runs every migration whose version exceeds the stored value, in order, before resolving.

const opened = await CapacitorSqlite.open({
  database: 'myapp',
  migrations: [
    {
      version: 1,
      statements: ['CREATE TABLE users (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, name TEXT NOT NULL)'],
    },
  ],
});
if (!opened.success) throw new Error(opened.error.message);

Write and read

Every method resolves to a SqliteResult — check success instead of relying on try/catch.

const inserted = await CapacitorSqlite.run({
  database: 'myapp',
  statement: 'INSERT INTO users (name) VALUES (?)',
  values: ['Alice'],
});
if (!inserted.success) throw new Error(inserted.error.message);
console.log('Inserted row id:', inserted.data.lastInsertId);

const queried = await CapacitorSqlite.query<{ id: number; name: string }>({
  database: 'myapp',
  statement: 'SELECT * FROM users',
});
if (!queried.success) throw new Error(queried.error.message);
console.log('Rows:', queried.data.rows);

Close

await CapacitorSqlite.close({ database: 'myapp' });

Success signal

If queried.data.rows logs [{ id: 1, name: 'Alice' }], migrations, writes, and reads are all working end to end on the current platform.

Next steps

• Platform-specific setup (Electron registration, Web headers): Installation.
• The SqliteResult contract, migration model, and transaction scoping: Concepts.
• Bind values, placeholders, and BLOB handling: Usage.