Snippet to dump and load zipped sqlite3 databases, based on Eli Bendersky's example. Useful for storing sqlite3 databases from memory to disk

zip_database.py

import zipfile

def dump_database(connection, dump_file, sql_file):
    """Function to dump sqlite3 database into zipped file

    see: http://bit.ly/IAUmKc

    python 2.6+ only

    connection: sqlite3 database connection
    dumpfile: the name of the zipfile to store the sql_file info 
              [remember to add a .zip extension]
    sql_file: The name of the sql file to dump the database info into
              [remember to add a .sql extension]
    """

    # Open the db and dump all its data into the 'data' buffer
    sql_dump = ''.join([data.encode('ISO-8859-1') for data in connection.iterdump()])

    # Create a zip file and write add the dump into it as a new file
    zf = zipfile.ZipFile(dump_file, mode='w', compression=zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)
    zf.writestr(sql_file, sql_dump )
    zf.close()

def load_database(zip_file, sql_file):
    """Returns a list of sql statements used to recreate a dumped database"""

    zf = zipfile.ZipFile(zip_file)
    try:
        data = zf.read(sql_file)
        # break sql into readable statements and re-create creation statements
        # return data # uncomment for return of raw sql data
        return data.split(';')
    except KeyError:
        print '%s not found in zip file' % (sql_file,)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    pass