Ira,

Thanks for getting a sqlite datatype into galaxy.  I was wanting to subclass a sqlite datatype for another application: cistrome CEAS

I had made a sqlite datatype that captured a little metadata that I thought could be useful for the display peek, and perhaps for filtering. 
Is this worth considering? 


The peek for a CEAS DB would include table names, column names, and row count:

SQLite Database
GeneTable (chrom,name,strand,txStart,txEnd,cdsStart,cdsEnd,exonCount,exonStarts,exonEnds,name2) [24892]
GenomeBGP (chrom,promoter,bipromoter,downstream,gene,rel_loc,rel_loc_cds,roi,chroms) [7]
GenomeBGS (chrom,promoter,bipromoter,downstream,gene,rel_loc,rel_loc_cds,roi,Ns) [7]
GenomePieP (chrom,promoter,downstream,gene,enhancer,chroms) [7]
GenomePieS (chrom,promoter,downstream,gene,enhancer,total) [7]



$ hg diff /Users/jj/gxt/gxt/lib/galaxy/datatypes/binary.py
diff -r f002131cb905 lib/galaxy/datatypes/binary.py
--- a/lib/galaxy/datatypes/binary.py    Fri Jul 25 12:01:34 2014 -0400
+++ b/lib/galaxy/datatypes/binary.py    Fri Jul 25 12:13:05 2014 -0500
@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@
 
 from bx.seq.twobit import TWOBIT_MAGIC_NUMBER, TWOBIT_MAGIC_NUMBER_SWAP, TWOBIT_MAGIC_SIZE
 
-from galaxy.datatypes.metadata import MetadataElement
+from galaxy.datatypes.metadata import MetadataElement,ListParameter,DictParameter
 from galaxy.datatypes import metadata
 from galaxy.datatypes.sniff import *
 import dataproviders
@@ -550,8 +550,36 @@
 
 @dataproviders.decorators.has_dataproviders
 class SQlite ( Binary ):
+    """Class describing a Sqlite database """
+    MetadataElement( name="tables", default=[], param=ListParameter, desc="Database Tables", readonly=True, visible=True, no_value=[] )
+    MetadataElement( name="table_columns", default={}, param=DictParameter, desc="Database Table Columns", readonly=True, visible=True, no_value={} )
+    MetadataElement( name="table_row_count", default={}, param=DictParameter, desc="Database Table Row Count", readonly=True, visible=True, no_value={} )
     file_ext = "sqlite"
 
+    def init_meta( self, dataset, copy_from=None ):
+        Binary.init_meta( self, dataset, copy_from=copy_from )
+
+    def set_meta( self, dataset, overwrite = True, **kwd ):
+        try:
+            tables = []
+            columns = dict()
+            rowcounts = dict()
+            conn = sqlite3.connect(dataset.file_name)
+            c = conn.cursor()
+            tables_query = "SELECT name,sql FROM sqlite_master WHERE type='table' ORDER BY name"
+            rslt = c.execute(tables_query).fetchall();
+            for table,sql in rslt:
+                tables.append(table)
+                columns[table] = re.sub('^.*\((.*)\)$','\\1',sql).split(',')
+            for table in tables:
+                row_query = "SELECT count(*) FROM %s" % table
+                rowcounts[table] = c.execute(row_query).fetchone()[0];
+            dataset.metadata.tables = tables
+            dataset.metadata.table_columns = columns
+            dataset.metadata.table_row_count = rowcounts
+        except Exception, exc:
+            pass
+
     # Connects and runs a query that should work on any real database
     # If the file is not sqlite, an exception will be thrown and the sniffer will return false
     def sniff( self, filename ):
@@ -567,7 +595,14 @@
 
     def set_peek( self, dataset, is_multi_byte=False ):
         if not dataset.dataset.purged:
-            dataset.peek  = "SQLite Database"
+            lines = ['SQLite Database']
+            if dataset.metadata.tables:
+                for table in dataset.metadata.tables:
+                    try:
+                        lines.append('%s (%s) [%s]' % (table,','.join(dataset.metadata.table_columns.get(table,[])),dataset.metadata.table_row_count[table]))
+                    except:
+                        continue
+            dataset.peek = '\n'.join(lines)
             dataset.blurb = data.nice_size( dataset.get_size() )
         else:
             dataset.peek = 'file does not exist'


Thanks,

JJ
--
James E. Johnson, Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, University of Minnesota