Version 4 is in beta release. For more stable version, see v3.x Tags

LiteDB - A .NET NoSQL Document Store in a single data file

LiteDB is a small, fast and lightweight NoSQL embedded database.

• Serverless NoSQL Document Store
• Simple API similar to MongoDB
• 100% C# code for .NET 3.5 / .NET 4.0 / NETStandard 1.3 in a single DLL (less than 300kb)
• Thread safe and process safe
• ACID in document/operation level
• Data recovery after write failure (journal mode)
• Datafile encryption using DES (AES) cryptography
• Map your POCO classes to BsonDocument using attributes or fluent mapper API
• Store files and stream data (like GridFS in MongoDB)
• Single data file storage (like SQLite)
• Index document fields for fast search (up to 16 indexes per collection)
• LINQ support for queries
• Shell command line - try this online version
• Pretty fast - compare results with SQLite here
• Open source and free for everyone - including commercial use
• Install from NuGet: Install-Package LiteDB

New in 4.0

• New Expressions/Path index/query support. See Expressions
• Optimzed query execution (with explain plain debug)
• Fix concurrency problems
• Remove transaction and auto index creation
• Support for full scan search and LINQ search
• New shell commands: update fields based on expressions and select/transform documents
• See full changelog

Try online

Try LiteDB Web Shell. For security reasons, in the online version not all commands are available. Try the offline version for full feature tests.

Documentation

Visit the Wiki for full documentation. For simplified chinese version, check here.

Download

Download the source code or binary only in LiteDB Releases

How to use LiteDB

A quick example for storing and searching documents:

// Create your POCO class
public class Customer
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public int Age { get; set; }
    public string[] Phones { get; set; }
    public bool IsActive { get; set; }
}

// Open database (or create if doesn't exist)
using(var db = new LiteDatabase(@"MyData.db"))
{
    // Get customer collection
    var col = db.GetCollection<Customer>("customers");

    // Create your new customer instance
	var customer = new Customer
    { 
        Name = "John Doe", 
        Phones = new string[] { "8000-0000", "9000-0000" }, 
        Age = 39,
        IsActive = true
    };
    
    // Create unique index in Name field
    col.EnsureIndex(x => x.Name, true);
	
    // Insert new customer document (Id will be auto-incremented)
    col.Insert(customer);
	
    // Update a document inside a collection
    customer.Name = "Joana Doe";
	
    col.Update(customer);
	
    // Use LINQ to query documents (with no index)
    var results = col.Find(x => x.Age > 20);
}

Using fluent mapper and cross document reference for more complex data models

// DbRef to cross references
public class Order
{
    public ObjectId Id { get; set; }
    public DateTime OrderDate { get; set; }
    public Address ShippingAddress { get; set; }
    public Customer Customer { get; set; }
    public List<Product> Products { get; set; }
}        

// Re-use mapper from global instance
var mapper = BsonMapper.Global;

// "Produts" and "Customer" are from other collections (not embedded document)
mapper.Entity<Order>()
    .DbRef(x => x.Customer, "customers")   // 1 to 1/0 reference
    .DbRef(x => x.Products, "products")    // 1 to Many reference
    .Field(x => x.ShippingAddress, "addr"); // Embedded sub document
            
using(var db = new LiteDatabase("MyOrderDatafile.db"))
{
    var orders = db.GetCollection<Order>("orders");
        
    // When query Order, includes references
    var query = orders
        .Include(x => x.Customer)
        .Include(x => x.Products) // 1 to many reference
        .Find(x => x.OrderDate <= DateTime.Now);

    // Each instance of Order will load Customer/Products references
    foreach(var order in query)
    {
        var name = order.Customer.Name;
        ...
    }
}

Where to use?

• Desktop/local small applications
• Application file format
• Small web applications
• One database per account/user data store
• Few concurrent write operations

Plugins

• A GUI viewer tool: https://github.com/falahati/LiteDBViewer
• A GUI editor tool: https://github.com/JosefNemec/LiteDbExplorer
• Lucene.NET directory: https://github.com/sheryever/LiteDBDirectory
• LINQPad support: https://github.com/adospace/litedbpad

Changelog

Change details for each release are documented in the release notes.

License

MIT

Copyright (c) 2017 - Maurício David

Thanks

A special thanks to @negue and @szurgot helping with portable version and @lidanger for simplified chinese translation.