Return Plain Available-Item Records

The caller wants catalog records, not SQLite machinery. A useful public return looks like this:

{'id': 1, 'asset_tag': 'IT-100', 'name': 'Cordless drill',
 'category': 'tools', 'loan_days': 7}

The current (result, rows) pair served its purpose: you saw that execution returns a cursor and fetchall() returns a separate list of sqlite3.Row values. Keeping that pair public would force every caller to understand those details.

Open catalog_db.py. Change only the final return in list_available_items(connection):

available_items = []
for row in rows:
    available_items.append(dict(row))
return available_items

Each configured Row knows the five names from the SELECT list, so dict(row) creates a built-in dictionary with exactly these keys:

id, asset_tag, name, category, loan_days

The loop converts every fetched Row and collects the dictionaries in a plain list. The result object remains a useful local implementation detail, but it no longer crosses the function boundary. Callers can compare, serialize, or display ordinary dictionaries without importing sqlite3 or remembering column positions.

Keep the SQL unchanged. Its left join matches only active loans, and WHERE loans.id IS NULL keeps items with no such match. That means an item with returned history is available, just like an item that has never been loaned. ORDER BY items.asset_tag gives the caller stable ordering directly from the database.

Press Run. The call is still list_available_items(connection), using a connection from open_database(database_path). The observed public shape now changes:

Returned container type: list
First row type: dict
First row values: 1 | IT-100 | Cordless drill | tools | 7

The output also prints all four dictionaries in asset-tag order. The settings block remains unchanged because moving the public boundary does not change connection setup.

Submit uses new values, a name containing an apostrophe, shuffled insertion order, active loans, returned history, and items never loaned. It calls twice and checks exact built-in dictionary keys and values. Do not mutate the catalog or close the supplied connection.