How do I select a column by its name? (Python & SQLite3)

Question

Currently I have the following code:

c.execute("SELECT * FROM table")
for row in c.fetchall():
    print row[0]
    print row[1]

However, I changed the structure of my table and now I have to change the index values to represent this change. Is there a way to get use column names instead?

Answer 1

For this reason, it is recommended to always use explicit column names when doing a SELECT :

c.execute("SELECT color, fluffiness FROM table")
for row in c.fetchall():
    print row[0]         #  <-- is always guaranteed to be the color value
    print row[1]

Answer 2

See Row Objects in the docs for the sqlite3 module. If you use the sqlite3.Row row_factory you'll get back an object that's slightly more powerful than the normal tuples. I imagine it has slightly higher overhead, hence not being the default behavior.