How can I list the tables in a SQLite database file that was opened with ATTACH?

There are a few steps to see the tables in an SQLite database:

1. List the tables in your database:

   .tables
   

2. List how the table looks:

   .schema tablename
   

3. Print the entire table:

   SELECT * FROM tablename;
   

4. List all of the available SQLite prompt commands:

   .help
   

The .tables, and .schema "helper" functions don't look into ATTACHed databases: they just query the SQLITE_MASTER table for the "main" database. Consequently, if you used

ATTACH some_file.db AS my_db;

then you need to do

SELECT name FROM my_db.sqlite_master WHERE type='table';

Note that temporary tables don't show up with .tables either: you have to list sqlite_temp_master for that:

SELECT name FROM sqlite_temp_master WHERE type='table';

It appears you need to go through the sqlite_master table, like this:

SELECT * FROM dbname.sqlite_master WHERE type='table';

And then manually go through each table with a SELECT or similar to look at the rows.

The .DUMP and .SCHEMA commands doesn't appear to see the database at all.

To show all tables, use

SELECT name FROM sqlite_master WHERE type = "table"

To show all rows, I guess you can iterate through all tables and just do a SELECT * on each one. But maybe a DUMP is what you're after?

There is a command available for this on the SQLite command line:

.tables ?PATTERN?      List names of tables matching a LIKE pattern

Which converts to the following SQL:

SELECT name FROM sqlite_master
WHERE type IN ('table','view') AND name NOT LIKE 'sqlite_%'
UNION ALL
SELECT name FROM sqlite_temp_master
WHERE type IN ('table','view')
ORDER BY 1

To list the tables you can also do:

SELECT name FROM sqlite_master
WHERE type='table';

The easiest way to do this is to open the database directly and use the .dump command, rather than attaching it after invoking the SQLite 3 shell tool.

So... (assume your OS command line prompt is $) instead of $sqlite3:

sqlite3> ATTACH database.sqlite as "attached"

From your OS command line, open the database directly:

$sqlite3 database.sqlite
sqlite3> .dump

Via a union all, combine all tables into one list.

select name
from sqlite_master 
where type='table'

union all 

select name 
from sqlite_temp_master 
where type='table'

Use .da to see all databases - one is called 'main'.

Tables of this database can be seen by:

SELECT distinct tbl_name from sqlite_master order by 1;

The attached databases need prefixes you chose with AS in the statement ATTACH, e.g., aa (, bb, cc...) so:

SELECT distinct tbl_name from **aa.sqlite_master** order by 1;

Note that here you get the views as well. To exclude these add:

where type = 'table'

before ' order'

The ".schema" commando will list available tables and their rows, by showing you the statement used to create said tables:

sqlite> create table_a (id int, a int, b int);
sqlite> .schema table_a
CREATE TABLE table_a (id int, a int, b int);