Last year I added support for building the sqlite3 ruby gem against sqlcipher allowing ruby apps to access and query sqlcipher encrypted databases.

SQLCipher is simply a fork of sqlite, kept up-to-date with upstream, that provides 256 bit AES encrypted sqlite databases. It’s used heavily in mobile apps which was part of the inspiration for adding support as I wanted to be able to query my password manager Enpass which was the catalyst for adding sqlcipher support to the sqlite3 ruby gem.

Example usage (macOS)

$ brew install sqlcipher

$ gem install sqlite3 -- --with-sqlcipher

$ sqlcipher

sqlite> .open encrypted.db
sqlite> PRAGMA key='password';
sqlite> create table people (name text primary key);
sqlite> insert into people (name) values ('ace');
sqlite> .quit

Then accessing is as easy as passing in the key.

example.rb

require 'sqlite3'

db = SQLite3::Database.new 'encrypted.db'

db.execute "PRAGMA key='password';"

people = db.execute "SELECT * FROM people;"
puts "People: #{people}"

$ ruby example.rb

People: ace