Anyone Else Miss strip.db?

A major attraction for me of CodeBook was strip.db. I could download a copy from my backup, open it using my password then play with the data using DB Browser for SQLite. That’s totally gone now, replaced with a distributed data model and an unknown password. But, from the description of the new scheme it would be inadvisable to try to reconstruct the latest CodeBook state from the metadata and change logs, essentially one would be recreating CodeBook without the advantage of exhaustive testing.

So, here I am ready to do Christmas cards with my old query and no data. It would have been a lot better if this big change were delayed until after the holidays when people use their database to send cards, or at the very least a warning given that if you upgrade you lose access to all your data via backups.

Since this is the wave of the future in my opinion the export function needs to be beefed up. I store a lot of really sensitive data along with my address book. Unfortunately, it’s either the entire database or just favorites. Problem is, you can’t toggle favorites on a selected list, only the last one changes. So I will need to export the lot then delete all sensitive data.

Update: I opened CodeBook on my Mac and it has export selected records. The CSV also includes every field that exists in any record. So, I don’t have to write any code to use it.

Hopefully the Windows version will have this soon, but at least I can use it on the Mac.

This from Stephen Lombardo, of course the data is still local…

Hello Bill,

Thank you for getting in touch with us about Codebook. The strip.db file is still in use on all platforms, but it is true that the full strip.db is no longer copied out to Dropbox or Google Drive on sync, in favor of Change Tracking databases to make Sync more efficient.

That said, I believe you are using Desktop Codebook platforms. It is very easy to get to the underlying strip.db on either macOS or Windows, as follows.

On macOS, open Finder and click Go menu → Go to Folder and paste this location in the address bar:

~/Library/Containers/net.zetetic.Strip.mac/Data/Library/Application Support/Strip

Within that location is a default.strip package, right click on that package and choose “Show Package Contents”.

On Windows, open Windows Explorer and paste the following path into the address bar area, it will expand when you hit enter:

%APPDATA%\Zetetic LLC\Strip

Note that Codebook 4 now uses SQLCipher 4, so you would need to use one of the most recent builds of DB Browser for SQLite to open the new version of strip.db. Inside you should find the schema is very similar to what you were previously using for Codebook 3.

Please let me know if that works for you or if you have any further trouble.

Cheers,
Stephen