Best practice on sqlite for games?

Question

Hi Everyone, I'm new to building games/apps, so I apologize if this question is redundant...

I am developing a couple games for Android/iOS, and was initially using a regular (un-encrypted) sqlite database. I need to populate the database with a lot of info for the games, such as levels, store items, etc. Originally, I was creating the database with SQL Manager (Firefox) and then when I install a game on a device, it would copy that pre-populated database to the device. However, if someone was able to access that app's database, they could feasibly add unlimited coins to their account, unlock every level, etc.

So I have a few questions:

First, can someone access that data in an APK/IPA app once downloaded from the app store, or is the method I've been using above secure and good practice?

Second, is the best solution to go with an encrypted database? I know Adobe Air has the built-in support for that, and I have the perfect article on how to create it (Ten tips for building better Adobe AIR applications | Adobe Developer Connection) but I would like the expert community opinion on this.

Now, if the answer is to go with encrypted, that's great - but, in doing so, is it possible to still use the copy function at the beginning or do I need to include all of the script to create the database tables and then populate them with everything? That will be quite a bit of script to handle the initial setup, and if the user was to abandon the app halfway through that population, it might mess things up.

Any thoughts / best practice / recommendations are very appreciated. Thank you!

JDeal · Answer

I'll just post my own reply to this.

What I ended up doing, was creating the script that self-creates the database and then populates the tables (as unencrypted... the encryption portion is commented out until store publishing). It's a tremendous amount of code, completely repetitive with the exception of the values I'm entering, but you can't do an insert loop or multi-line insert statement in AIR's SQLite so the best move is to create everything line by line.

This creates the database, and since it's not encrypted, it can be tested using Firefox's SQLite manager or some other database program. Once you're ready for deployment to the app stores, you simply modify the above set to use encryption instead of the unencrypted method used for testing.

So far this has worked best for me. If anyone needs some example code, let me know and I can post it.

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