Providing my android app with a DB encrypted with sqlcipher doesn't work, can't open it

Question

My android app works with a provided DB populated and located on the asset folder. I recently had to start adding private datas in it so I used sqlcipher to encrypt it. So before starting:

The encryption goes well, since I can decrypt it easily and read it back. This is done with sqlcipher shell.
Everything was working like a charm with the db not crypted

What I was doing was, on the first launch of my app, creating a blank db on my phone, copy and past the content of the provided db in it and then, the user was able to have his own db on his phone without having to recreate it each time ( the db is pretty big ). Indeed, if the user already has the db on his phone for the further launch, he won't have to recreate it this way.

But with sqlcipher, it's not working anymore.

Important: When using sqlcipher with a non crypted db ( using "" as parameter for the related method like openDatabase ), it was working as well.

But when I try with the crypted db and with the password, what I have is the error

file is encrypted or is not a database: create locale table failed

This happens after I created a blank db using this:

    //By calling this method and empty database will be created into the default system path
    //of your application so we are gonna be able to overwrite that database with our database.
    this.getReadableDatabase("password").close();

I then try to open it with the following instruction:

//Open the database
        String myPath = DB_PATH + DATABASE_NAME;
        myDataBase = SQLiteDatabase.openDatabase(myPath, "password", null, SQLiteDatabase.OPEN_READWRITE);

And then happens the error. Someone has an idea please? I'm saddly not an android expert, using a db was already difficult but as you can guess it's getting on another level now. Any help would be welcome. Thanks in advance !

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:31:08Z

1

Finally solve my problem after a long search following this link: Sqlcipher __ CREATE TABLE android_metadata failed

The error was coming from the way I was opening my db, which changes whether you use sqlcipher or sqlite.

Old way to open the db using sqlite:

myDataBase = SQLiteDatabase.openDatabase(myPath, "password", null, SQLiteDatabase.OPEN_READWRITE);

New way using sqlcipher, with a SQLiteDatabaseHook:

SQLiteDatabaseHook hook = new SQLiteDatabaseHook() {
            public void preKey(SQLiteDatabase database) {
            }

            public void postKey(SQLiteDatabase database) {
                database.rawExecSQL("PRAGMA cipher_migrate;");

            }
        };


        myDataBase = SQLiteDatabase.openOrCreateDatabase(myPath, "password", null, hook);

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:31

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Oct 14, 2015 at 8:19

Virthuss

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