SQLite DB-API syntax issues Python 3.5

Question

I have been searching through Stack Overflow as well as some other online research looking for the correct syntax to insert variables into my SQLite query. However, none of the 3 supported syntaxes have worked for my queries.

I found that the three supported syntaxes for the SQLite DB-API are:

qmark:
curs.execute("SELECT * FROM actors where actor.first_name = ?",("D'Angelo", ))

numeric:
curs.execute("SELECT * FROM actors where actor.first_name = :1", ("D'Angelo", ))

named:
curs.execute("SELECT * FROM actors where actor.first_name = :first_name",{'first_name': "D'Angelo"})

taken from http://www.philvarner.com/test/ng-python3-db-api/

However when I execute the following, I receive these errors:

named:

tableListQuery = "SELECT name FROM :dbFile WHERE type='table' ORDER BY Name", {'dbFile': dbFile}
userCursor.execute(tableListQuery)

Pycharm error: Expected type 'str', got 'Tuple[str, Dict[str, Any]]' 

Terminal error:
File "./dedupeDatabase.py", line 15, in Describe
userCursor.execute(tableListQuery)
ValueError: operation parameter must be str
-------------------------------------------------
qmark:

tableListQuery = "SELECT name FROM ? WHERE type='table' ORDER BY Name", (dbFile, )
userCursor.execute(tableListQuery)

Pycharm error: Expected type 'str', got 'Tuple[str, Tuple[Any]]' instead

Terminal error:
File "./dedupeDatabase.py", line 15, in Describe
userCursor.execute(tableListQuery)
ValueError: operation parameter must be str
-------------------------------------------------
numeric:

tableListQuery = "SELECT name FROM :1 WHERE type='table' ORDER BY Name", (dbFile, )
userCursor.execute(tableListQuery)

Pycharm error: Expected type 'str', got 'Tuple[str, Tuple[Any]]'

Terminal error:
File "./dedupeDatabase.py", line 15, in Describe
userCursor.execute(tableListQuery)
ValueError: operation parameter must be str

Please provide any insight you may have on this issue.

Answer 1

So your fundamental issue is simply one of syntax. Defining tableListQuery as "my query string", params defines a tuple ; you can't pass that tuple directly to execute , and the documentation does not say you can.[1]

You need to do as shown in the original snippet you quoted:

tableListQuery = "SELECT name FROM table WHERE type=:dbFile ORDER BY Name"
params = {'dbFile': dbFile}
userCursor.execute(tableListQuery, params) 

Now the second issue, as pointed out in the comments, is that you can't use SQL parameters for things like field or table names; only for WHERE values. You would need to use normal Python string formatting for that.

[1] You could do it with the * operator, but that's probably confusing at this point.