ProtoDB

What is ProtoDB

Proto is a small Node.js tool to persist a JavaScript object to disk.

Why ProtoDB

At the early prototyping phase of several projects, we were too lazy to set up a proper database and instead we used a JavaScript object and persisted it by reading & writing JSON to disk.

We expected that our approach wouldn't survive long and that we would soon need to replace our lazy hack with a real database. But, and to our biggest surprise, we got quite far until we had to use a real database.

Proto is only ~40 lines of code (/index.js), so you can easily modify it and write your own implementation.

We actually encourage you to write your own implementation; ProtoDB is a cheering message that the technique of using JSON and the filesystem can be a great alternative to a database for prototypes and small to medium-sized apps. You may not use Proto but you may want to consider this technique.

Usage

Idiomatic usage example:

// /example/db/index.js

const proto = require('@brillout/proto-db'); // npm install @brillout/proto-db

const data = proto.load(__dirname+'/data.json', {todos: []});

module.exports = {createTodo, getAllTodos};

async function createTodo({text}) {
  const id = proto.getUUID();
  const newTodo = {id, text};

  data.todos.push(newTodo);

  await data._save();
}

function getAllTodos() {
  return data.todos;
}

// /example/index.js

const db = require('./db');

run();

async function run() {
  await db.createTodo({text: 'Buy Milk'});

  const todos = db.getAllTodos();
  console.log(todos);
}

Which prints:

$ node example/
[ { id: 430557952207, text: 'Buy Milk' } ]

The new todo item is saved as JSON in data.json:

$ cat example/db/data.json
{"todos":[{"id":199451513185,"text":"Buy Milk"}]}

API

• const data = proto.load(databaseFile, defaultValue) loads and returns the JavaScript object saved at databaseFile. If there is no file at databaseFile then defaultValue is used. The proto.load function is synchronous.
• await data._proto.save() saves data to the disk at the path databaseFile you provided when running const data = proto.load(databaseFile).
• proto.getUUID() generates and returns a universally unique ID.