AHKDb is a database library for AutoHotkey. It makes it possible to store, modify and extract information from tab separated databases.

• No external dependencies (100% AHK)
• Efficient
• Lightweight
• Easy to use
• Over 100 functions
• Built-in graphical database viewer
• Well-commented code
• Extensive documentation
• Practice datasets included

To start using AHKDb, two things have to be done.

1. Place AHKDb.ahk in the working directory.
2. Put #Include AHKDb.ahk somewhere in your .ahk file.

AHKDb can now be used. For a start, it can be a good idea to try the code example below. For information about the functions of AHKDb, the documentation may be useful.

The following code example demonstrates some of the functionality of AHKDb:

#Include AHKDb.ahk

; Create a test database of type "AIRPORTS"
DatabaseCreateTest( "database.txt", "AIRPORTS" )
DatabaseView( "database.txt" )

; Add a new airport
DatabaseAddRow( "database.txt", "HFA", "Haifa Airport", "Haifa, Israel", "1934", "9" )
DatabaseView( "database.txt" )

; Sort airports by opening year
DatabaseSortByColumn( "database.txt", 4, , , TRUE )
DatabaseView( "database.txt" )

; Keep only airports opened in 1936
DatabaseKeepIfEqual( "database.txt", 4, 1936, TRUE )
DatabaseView( "database.txt" )

; Remove the third column
DatabaseRemoveColumn( "database.txt", 3 )
DatabaseView( "database.txt" )

; Find the airport with the highest elevation
HighestElevation := DatabaseGetLargest( "database.txt", , 4, , TRUE )
Airport := DatabaseMatchGetColumn( "database.txt", 2, TRUE, , , , HighestElevation )
MsgBox, %Airport% has the highest elevation of %HighestElevation% meter above sea level.

; Delete database
DatabaseDelete( "database.txt" )

AHKDb includes a database viewer, which can be opened using DatabaseView( "database.txt" ). The viewer can display up to 50 columns and practically unlimited rows. By default, the AHK script that opened the viewer is paused until the viewer is closed, but this can be changed by a passing a TRUE argument.

Data is stored using tab separation. The principle is the same as for comma-separated values (CSV), but with tab as separator instead of comma. This way of storing data has pros and cons, as outlined in this blog post which compares it with other formats. One disadvantage is that the format is not suited for nesting data. An advantage is that the data is stored relatively compactly, and another is that the tab-separated data format can be read by many programs (as seen below with Microsoft Excel, Notepad, Brackets and Mozilla Firefox), although columns may not be well aligned if data within columns are of varying length.

The following list shortly describes each function of AHKDb. More details about each function is found in the documentation.

AHKDb can easily be confused with AHK-DB, an SQLite database library for AHK.