Android: How to create my own cursor class?

Question

I'm using Sqlite in Android and to get a value from the database I use something like this:

Cursor cursor = sqliteDatabase.rawQuery("select title,category from table", null);

int columnIndexTitle = cursor.getColumnIndex("title");
iny columnIndexCategory = cursor.getColumnIndex("category");

cursor.moveToFirst();
while (cursor.moveToNext()) {
    String title = cursor.getString(columnIndexTitle);  
    String category = cursor.getString(columnIndexCategory);    
}
cursor.close();

I want to create my own Cursor so that I can do getColumnIndex() and getString() with one method. Something like this:

String title = cursor.getString("title");

I want to create my own class that extends the cursor that I get from sqliteDatabase.rawQuery, but I'm not sure how to accomplish this. Should I extend SQLiteCursor or how should I do this? Is it even a possible and is it a good idea?

Answer 1

Creating your own getString will cause a map lookup for each call instead of only for getColumnIndex.

Here's the code for SQLiteCursor.getColumnIndex and AbstractCursor.getColumnIndex. If you have many rows, reducing calls to this function will prevent unnecessary string processing and map lookups.