SQLite UPSERT / UPDATE OR INSERT

I need to perform UPSERT / INSERT OR UPDATE against a SQLite Database.

There is the command INSERT OR REPLACE which in many cases can be useful. But if you want to keep your id's with autoincrement in place because of foreign keys, it does not work since it deletes the row, creates a new one and consequently this new row has a new ID.

This would be the table:

players - (primary key on id, user_name unique)

|  id   | user_name |  age   |
------------------------------
|  1982 |   johnny  |  23    |
|  1983 |   steven  |  29    |
|  1984 |   pepee   |  40    |

Solution

This is a late answer. Starting from SQLIte 3.24.0, released on June 4, 2018, there is finally a support for UPSERT clause following PostgreSQL syntax.

INSERT INTO players (user_name, age)
  VALUES('steven', 32) 
  ON CONFLICT(user_name) 
  DO UPDATE SET age=excluded.age;

Note: For those having to use a version of SQLite earlier than 3.24.0, please reference this answer below (posted by me, @MarqueIV).

However if you do have the option to upgrade, you are strongly encouraged to do so as unlike my solution, the one posted here achieves the desired behavior in a single statement. Plus you get all the other features, improvements and bug fixes that usually come with a more recent release.