Is there an auto increment in sqlite?

Question

You get one for free, called ROWID. This is in every SQLite table whether you ask for it or not.

If you include a column of type INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, that column points at (is an alias for) the automatic ROWID column.

ROWID (by whatever name you call it) is assigned a value whenever you INSERT a row, as you would expect. If you explicitly assign a non-NULL value on INSERT, it will get that specified value instead of the auto-increment. If you explicitly assign a value of NULL on INSERT, it will get the next auto-increment value.

Also, you should try to avoid:

 INSERT INTO people VALUES ("John", "Smith");

and use

 INSERT INTO people (first_name, last_name) VALUES ("John", "Smith");

instead. The first version is very fragile — if you ever add, move, or delete columns in your table definition the INSERT will either fail or produce incorrect data (with the values in the wrong columns).

Yes, this is possible. According to the SQLite FAQ:

A column declared INTEGER PRIMARY KEY will autoincrement.

As of today — June 2018

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Here is what official SQLite documentation has to say on the subject (bold & italic are mine):

1. The AUTOINCREMENT keyword imposes extra CPU, memory, disk space, and disk I/O overhead and should be avoided if not strictly needed. It is usually not needed.

2. In SQLite, a column with type INTEGER PRIMARY KEY is an alias for the ROWID (except in WITHOUT ROWID tables) which is always a 64-bit signed integer.

3. On an INSERT, if the ROWID or INTEGER PRIMARY KEY column is not explicitly given a value, then it will be filled automatically with an unused integer, usually one more than the largest ROWID currently in use. This is true regardless of whether or not the AUTOINCREMENT keyword is used.

4. If the AUTOINCREMENT keyword appears after INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, that changes the automatic ROWID assignment algorithm to prevent the reuse of ROWIDs over the lifetime of the database. In other words, the purpose of AUTOINCREMENT is to prevent the reuse of ROWIDs from previously deleted rows.

Have you read this? How do I create an AUTOINCREMENT field.

INSERT INTO people
VALUES (NULL, "John", "Smith");