Securing SQLite Databases with the Authorizer

Learn about the SQLite database and how we can secure our database by providing the authorizer to it.

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Many PHP developers prefer to use SQLite as their database engine rather than a separate database server such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, or MongoDB. The reasons for using SQLite are many, but often come down to the following:

  • SQLite is a file-based database: We don’t have to install a separate database server.

  • It’s easy to distribute: The only requirement is that the target server needs to have the SQLite executable installed.

  • SQLite is lightweight: Since there’s no constantly running server, it takes fewer resources.

That said, the downside is that it’s not very scalable. If we have a fairly substantial amount of data to deal with, it’s probably better to install a more powerful database server. The other potentially major drawback is that SQLite has no security, which is covered in the next section.

Is there no security?

Yes, you heard correctly: by default, by its very design, SQLite has no security. That, of course, is the reason many developers like to use it: having no security makes it super easy to work with!

Here’s a sample block of code that connects to an SQLite database and conducts a simple query of the geonames table. It returns a list of cities in India where the population is greater than two million:

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