New iPad + iPadOS 18 and Pythonista no longer finds my SQLite databases

[nickevackerdag]

Hello!

I just upgraded to a new iPad Air and iPadOS 18.5 in hope of boosting Pythonista run speed. It seems that Pythonista doesn’t work well with SQLite in iPadOS 18.5. No matter what I have tried, I get an ”sqlite3.OperationalError: unable to open database file” error message.

Does anyone know why this is and what I can do to get Pythonista to communicate with SQLite again? This is critical to my work.

Best regards, Niklas

[RichardPotthoff]

May be Pythonista does not have permission to access the file.

Where is the database file, and where is the Python script?

You could narrow the problem down by trying to open the database file using Python's builtin "open" function to open the database file:

print(open('example.db','rb').read(100).split(b'\x00',1)[0])

I get the result:

>>> print(open('example.db','rb').read(100).split(b'\x00',1)[0])
b'SQLite format 3'

[nickevackerdag]

I have tried various ways. Python file in same folder as SQLite database, in different folders, in iCloud Drive, in Pythonista folder ”on my iPad”, in iCloud Drive Pythonista folder. When I run the open command as you suggested, I still get the ”FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'bildkartan-pois.sqlite'” error.

[nickevackerdag]

I’m not sure what I did differently, but now I managed to run the python program if I put them both (program and SQLite db) in the iCloud Drive Pythonista folder. If I put them in the folder where I want them in iCloud Drive, I get ”PermissionError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted: '../db/bildkartan_pois.sqlite'”.

[omz]

Apps cannot simply access other apps' directories without specific permission. If you want to make an external folder accessible in Pythonista, you can use the "Open..." > "Folder..." option (under "External Files" in the file browser).

[RichardPotthoff]

Here is a script I use to get the absolute path to a folder in the iOS "Files" app:

#get_path.py
import clipboard
import os
clipboard.set(os.getcwd())
print(f'{os.getcwd()=}\n(copied to clipboard)')

Here is how I use it:

1. I open the folder with the files I want to access in Pythonista, using "External Files" > "Open..." > "Folder..."
2. I add a new empty Python script ("+" > "Empty Script" > "get_path.py" > "Create"), paste the code above into the file, and run it. This will copy the absolute path of the folder into the clipboard.
3. I paste the path from the clipboard into the python program that needs to access files in the folder.

The path will look something like this:

/private/var/mobile/Containers/Shared/AppGroup/144C0536-1309-4683-A623-34610B4D006A/File Provider Storage/db

The path may change after an OS/app update, so you may have to run the "get_path.py" script again, and update the path in your program when that happens.

P.S.:
I try to avoid the "iCloud Drive", because the files may be modified from somewhere else, or the files may be offloaded into the cloud, and you may not be able to access them when you are offline.

I try to use only folders that are listed under "On My iPad" in the "Files" app.

I keep the Python scripts in the "Pythonista" folder in "On My iPad", (and not in Pythonista's "This iPad" folder), because then the version control app I am using ("Working Copy") has access to the files, and I can have git repositories directly in "On My iPad/Pythonista/", this is not possible with files in Pythonista's "This iPad" folder, as far as I can tell.