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What's the best way to iterate an Android Cursor?

I frequently see code which involves iterating over the result of a database query, doing something with each row, and then moving on to the next row. Typical examples are as follows.

Cursor cursor = db.rawQuery(...);
cursor.moveToFirst();
while (cursor.isAfterLast() == false) 
{
    ...
    cursor.moveToNext();
}
Cursor cursor = db.rawQuery(...);
for (boolean hasItem = cursor.moveToFirst(); 
     hasItem; 
     hasItem = cursor.moveToNext()) {
    ...
}
Cursor cursor = db.rawQuery(...);
if (cursor.moveToFirst()) {
    do {
        ...                 
    } while (cursor.moveToNext());
}

These all seem excessively long-winded to me, each with multiple calls to Cursor methods. Surely there must be a neater way?

like image 825
Graham Borland Avatar asked Oct 01 '22 19:10

Graham Borland


People also ask

How does cursor work in Android?

Cursors are what contain the result set of a query made against a database in Android. The Cursor class has an API that allows an app to read (in a type-safe manner) the columns that were returned from the query as well as iterate over the rows of the result set.


2 Answers

The simplest way is this:

while (cursor.moveToNext()) {
    ...
}

The cursor starts before the first result row, so on the first iteration this moves to the first result if it exists. If the cursor is empty, or the last row has already been processed, then the loop exits neatly.

Of course, don't forget to close the cursor once you're done with it, preferably in a finally clause.

Cursor cursor = db.rawQuery(...);
try {
    while (cursor.moveToNext()) {
        ...
    }
} finally {
    cursor.close();
}

If you target API 19+, you can use try-with-resources.

try (Cursor cursor = db.rawQuery(...)) {
    while (cursor.moveToNext()) {
        ...
    }
}
like image 528
Graham Borland Avatar answered Oct 27 '22 11:10

Graham Borland


The best looking way I've found to go through a cursor is the following:

Cursor cursor;
... //fill the cursor here

for (cursor.moveToFirst(); !cursor.isAfterLast(); cursor.moveToNext()) {
    // do what you need with the cursor here
}

Don't forget to close the cursor afterwards

EDIT: The given solution is great if you ever need to iterate a cursor that you are not responsible of. A good example would be, if you are taking a cursor as argument in a method, and you need to scan the cursor for a given value, without having to worry about the cursor's current position.

like image 122
Alex Styl Avatar answered Oct 27 '22 11:10

Alex Styl