Android Studio SQLCipher: Error resolving method 'loadLibs' in 'SQLiteDatabase'(SQLiteDatabase.loadLibs();)

Question

Error resolving method 'loadLibs' in 'SQLiteDatabase'(SQLiteDatabase.loadLibs();)

I am trying to use SQLCipher for android studio, although I have added library to dependencies I get this error.

(DBHelper class)

    public DBHelper(Context context) {
        super(context, DB_Name, null, DATABASE_VERSION);
        this.myContext = context;
        this.DB_Path = "/data/data/" + context.getPackageName() + "/" + "databases/";

        Log.e("Path 1", DB_Path);

        SQLiteDatabase.loadLibs();
        
    }

I have added this libraries:

implementation 'net.zetetic:sqlcipher-android:4.5.4@aar'
implementation 'androidx.sqlite:sqlite:2.2.0'

(and also tried older library)

import net.zetetic.database.sqlcipher.SQLiteDatabase;

I have synced project, and built gradle, and tried "Invalidate caches" and Clean and Rebuild project, but problem persists.

Answer 1

So after struggling with a similar issue for most of a day I think I have a solution...

My error started when I needed to migrate an app from using net.zetetic:android-database-sqlcipher:4.4.0 (Deprecated) to the listed replacement net.zetetic:sqlcipher-android:4.5.5 which then resulted in the app crashing on open with the exception java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: No implementation found for long net.zetetic.database.sqlcipher.SQLiteConnection.nativeOpen(...

All of the answers I was able to find only mention the need to have a call to SQLiteDatabase.loadLibs() in the app but my app did not have that before this update and was working fine. Further the new library net.zetetic:sqlcipher-android:4.5.5 does not have any such method (I checked the source repo)... so after some more searching I found another method used in one of the test clases in the library source (net.zetetic.database.sqlcipher_cts.RoomUpsertTest)

which is System.loadLibrary("sqlcipher");

So I added that into my DB initialisation and now the app runs fine again.