Getting started with sql

The regular getting started guide explains how to get started with moor by declaring both tables and queries in Dart. This version will focus on how to use moor with SQL instead.

Adding the dependency

First, lets add moor to your project’s pubspec.yaml. At the moment, the current version of moor is and the latest version of moor_generator is

dependencies:
  moor: # use the latest version
  sqlite3_flutter_libs: # Also use the latest version.
  path_provider:
  path:

dev_dependencies:
  moor_generator: # use the latest version
  build_runner: 

If you’re wondering why so many packages are necessary, here’s a quick overview over what each package does:

• moor: This is the core package defining most apis
• sqlite3_flutter_libs: Ships the latest sqlite3 version with your Android or iOS app.
• path_provider and path: Used to find a suitable location to store the database. Maintained by the Flutter and Dart team
• moor_generator: Generates Dart apis for the sql queries and tables you wrote
• build_runner: Common tool for code-generation, maintained by the Dart team

Some versions of the Flutter tool create a broken settings.gradle on Android, which can cause problems with moor_ffi. If you get a “Failed to load dynamic library” exception, see this comment.

Declaring tables and queries

To declare tables and queries in sql, create a file called tables.moor next to your Dart files (for instance in lib/database/tables.moor).

You can put CREATE TABLE statements for your queries in there. The following example creates two tables to model a todo-app. If you’re migrating an existing project to moor, you can just copy the CREATE TABLE statements you’ve already written into this file.

-- this is the tables.moor file
CREATE TABLE todos (
    id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
    title TEXT,
    body TEXT,
    category INT REFERENCES categories (id)
);

CREATE TABLE categories (
    id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
    description TEXT
) AS Category; -- see the explanation on "AS Category" below

/* after declaring your tables, you can put queries in here. Just
   write the name of the query, a colon (:) and the SQL: */
todosInCategory: SELECT * FROM todos WHERE category = ?;

/* Here's a more complex query: It counts the amount of entries per 
category, including those entries which aren't in any category at all. */
countEntries:     
  SELECT
    c.description,
    (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM todos WHERE category = c.id) AS amount
  FROM categories c
  UNION ALL
  SELECT null, (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM todos WHERE category IS NULL)

Generating matching code

After you declared the tables, lets generate some Dart code to actually run them. Moor needs to know which tables are used in a database, so we have to write a small Dart class that moor will then read. Lets create a file called database.dart next to the tables.moor file you wrote in the previous step.

import 'dart:io';

import 'package:moor/moor.dart';
// These imports are only needed to open the database
import 'package:moor/ffi.dart';
import 'package:path_provider/path_provider.dart';
import 'package:path/path.dart' as p;

part 'database.g.dart';

@UseMoor(
  // relative import for the moor file. Moor also supports `package:`
  // imports
  include: {'tables.moor'},
)
class AppDb extends _$AppDb {
  AppDb() : super(_openConnection());

  @override
  int get schemaVersion => 1;
}

LazyDatabase _openConnection() {
  // the LazyDatabase util lets us find the right location for the file async.
  return LazyDatabase(() async {
    // put the database file, called db.sqlite here, into the documents folder
    // for your app.
    final dbFolder = await getApplicationDocumentsDirectory();
    final file = File(p.join(dbFolder.path, 'db.sqlite'));
    return VmDatabase(file);
  });
}

To generate the database.g.dart file which contains the _$AppDb superclass, run flutter pub run build_runner build on the command line.

What moor generates

Let’s take a look at what moor generated during the build:

• Generated data classes (Todo and Category) - these hold a single row from the respective table.
• Companion versions of these classes. Those are only relevant when using the Dart apis of moor, you can learn more here.
• A CountEntriesResult class, it holds the result rows when running the countEntries query.
• A _$AppDb superclass. It takes care of creating the tables when the database file is first opened. It also contains typesafe methods for the queries declared in the tables.moor file:
  • a Selectable<Todo> todosInCategory(int) method, which runs the todosInCategory query declared above. Moor has determined that the type of the variable in that query is int, because that’s the type of the category column we’re comparing it to.
    The method returns a Selectable to indicate that it can both be used as a regular query (Selectable.get returns a Future<List<Todo>>) or as an auto-updating stream (by using .watch instead of .get()).
  • a Selectable<CountEntriesResult> countEntries() method, which runs the other query when used.

By the way, you can also put insert, update and delete statements in a .moor file - moor will generate matching code for them as well.

Learning more

Now that you know how to use moor together with sql, here are some further guides to help you learn more:

• The SQL IDE that provides feedback on sql queries right in your editor.
• Transactions
• Schema migrations
• Writing queries and expressions in Dart
• A more in-depth guide on moor files, which explains import statements and the Dart-SQL interop.