sqlite3 error: Incorrect number of bindings supplied

# sqlite3 error: Incorrect number of bindings supplied

The Python error "sqlite3.ProgrammingError: Incorrect number of bindings supplied. The current statement uses 1, and there are X supplied" occurs when you pass a string or other literal instead of a tuple to the cursor.execute() method.

You can parenthesize the parameter and add a comma to make it into a tuple to solve the error.

Here is an example of how the error occurs.

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import sqlite3

connection = sqlite3.connect('movies.db')

cursor = connection.cursor()

# ⛔️ sqlite3.ProgrammingError: Incorrect number of bindings supplied. The current statement uses 1, and there are 7 supplied.
cursor.execute('INSERT into movies VALUES(?)', ('movie A'))

The issue in the code sample is that we are passing a string as the second argument to cursor.execute() when a sequence is expected.

Wrapping a single string in parentheses does not make it a tuple.

You can use the type class to verify the value's type.

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a_str = ('movie A')

print(type(a_str)) # 👉️ <class 'str'>

print(isinstance(a_str, str)) # 👉️ True

# Place a comma after the string to make it a tuple

You can place a comma after the string to make it a tuple to solve the error.

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import sqlite3

connection = sqlite3.connect('movies.db')

cursor = connection.cursor()

cursor.execute('INSERT into movies VALUES(?)', ('movie A', ))

I updated the second parameter from:

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# 👇️ This is a string
('movie A')

To:

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# 👇️ This is a tuple
('movie A', )

You can use the type() class to verify that the value is a tuple.

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a_tuple = ('movie A', )
print(type(a_tuple)) # 👉️ <class 'tuple'>

print(isinstance(a_tuple, tuple)) # 👉️ True

The error message stated "sqlite3.ProgrammingError: Incorrect number of bindings supplied. The current statement uses 1, and there are 7 supplied." because 1 parameter is expected and 7 parameters are supplied.

This is because the string "movie A" has exactly 7 characters.

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print(len('movie A')) # 👉️ 7

You can imagine that the string was split on each character and passed as multiple arguments to the cursor.execute() method.

# Using a list to solve the error

You can also use a list to solve the error, you don't necessarily have to use a tuple.

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import sqlite3

connection = sqlite3.connect('movies.db')

cursor = connection.cursor()

cursor.execute('INSERT into movies VALUES(?)', ['movie A'])

You just have to make sure that the second argument you pass to cursor.execute() is a sequence (not a string).

# Make sure the number of columns is the same as the number of supplied values

Another common cause of the error is when there's a mismatch between the number of columns and the number of supplied values.

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import sqlite3

connection = sqlite3.connect('movies.db')

cursor = connection.cursor()

# ⛔️ sqlite3.ProgrammingError: Incorrect number of bindings supplied. The current statement uses 1, and there are 2 supplied.
cursor.execute(
    'INSERT into movies VALUES(?)',
    ['movie A', 'movie B']
)

Notice that we only have 1 column VALUES(?) in the example, but we've supplied 2 values as the second parameter to cursor.execute().

You have to make sure the number of columns matches the number of supplied values to insert.

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import sqlite3

connection = sqlite3.connect('movies.db')

cursor = connection.cursor()

cursor.execute(
    'INSERT into movies VALUES(?, ?)',
    ['movie A', 'movie B']
)

The code sample above assumes that the table has 2 columns, so we have 2 question marks and 2 values in the list.

I've also written an article on how to open, view and query SQLite in VS Code.

# Additional Resources

You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:

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