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EffectThe story
tinybase
v7.3.2TypeScript
A reactive data store and sync engine.
33.0K/weekUpdated 2 weeks agoMITUnpacked: 8.6 MB
Published by jamesgpearce
npm install tinybaseA reactive data store & sync engine
"The one with state hooks!"
It's Reactive
TinyBase lets you listen to changes made to any part of your data. This means your app will be fast, since you only spend rendering cycles on things that change. The optional bindings to React and pre-built components let you easily build fully reactive UIs on top of TinyBase. You even get a built-in undo stack, and developer tools!
It's Database-Like
Consumer app? Enterprise app? Or even a game? Model key-value data and tabular data with optional typed schematization, whatever its data structures. There are built-in indexing, metric aggregation, and tabular relationships APIs - and a powerful query engine to select, join, filter, and group data (reactively!) without SQL.
It Synchronizes
TinyBase has native CRDT support, meaning that you can deterministically synchronize and merge data across multiple sources, clients, and servers. And although TinyBase is an in-memory data store, you can easily persist your data to file, browser storage, IndexedDB, SQLite or PostgreSQL databases, and more.
It's Built For A Local-First World
TinyBase works anywhere that JavaScript does, but it's especially great for local-first apps: where data is stored locally on the user's device and that can be run offline. It's tiny by name, tiny by nature: just 5.4kB - 12.1kB and with no dependencies - yet 100% tested, fully documented, and of course, open source!
TinyBase works great on its own, but also plays well with friends.
(Baffled by all these logos? Check out our architectural options guide to make sense of it all!)
Start with a simple key-value store.
Creating a Store requires just a simple call to the createStore function. Once you have one, you can easily set Values in it by unique Id. And of course you can easily get them back out again.
Read more about using keyed value data in The Basics guide.
``js
import {createStore} from 'tinybase';
const store = createStore()
.setValues({employees: 3})
.setValue('open', true);
console.log(store.getValues());
// -> {employees: 3, open: true}
`
For other types of data applications, a tabular data structure is more useful. TinyBase lets you set and get nested Read more about setting and changing data in The Basics guide.Level up to use tabular data.
Table, Row, or Cell data, by unique Id - and in the same Store as the keyed values!
`js
store
.setTable('pets', {fido: {species: 'dog'}})
.setCell('pets', 'fido', 'color', 'brown');
console.log(store.getRow('pets', 'fido'));
// -> {species: 'dog', color: 'brown'}
`
The magic starts to happen when you register listeners on a Read more about listeners in the Listening To Stores guide.Register granular listeners.
Value, Table, Row, or Cell. They get called when any part of that object changes. You can also use wildcards - useful when you don't know the Id of the objects that might change.
`js
const listenerId = store.addTableListener('pets', () =>
console.log('changed'),
);
store.setCell('pets', 'fido', 'sold', false);
// -> 'changed'
store.delListener(listenerId);
`
If you're using React in your application, the optional More magic! The Basically you simply describe what data you want in your user interface and TinyBase will take care of the whole lifecycle of updating it for you. Read more about the using hooks in the Using React Hooks guide.Call hooks to bind to data.
ui-react module provides hooks to bind to the data in a Store.useCell hook in this example fetches the dog's color. But it also registers a listener on that cell that will fire and re-render the component whenever the value changes.
`jsx
import React from 'react';
import {createRoot} from 'react-dom/client';
import {useCell} from 'tinybase/ui-react';
const App1 = () => {
const color = useCell('pets', 'fido', 'color', store);
return <>Color: {color};
};
const app = document.createElement('div');
const root = createRoot(app);
root.render(
console.log(app.innerHTML);
// -> 'Color: brown'
store.setCell('pets', 'fido', 'color', 'walnut');
console.log(app.innerHTML);
// -> 'Color: walnut'
root.unmount();
`
The For web applications in particular, the new Try them out in the UI Components demos, and read more about the underlying If you are building a web application, the new Read more about this powerful new tool in the Inspecting Data guide. Want clean data? You can add a And our 'schematizer' modules let you convert schemas from libraries like Zod, TypeBox, Valibot, ArkType, Yup, and Effect Schema into TinyBase at runtime. Read more about schemas in the Schemas guide.Pre-built reactive components.
ui-react module provides bare React components that let you build up a fully reactive user interface based on a Store.ui-react-dom module provides pre-built components for tabular display of your data, with lots of customization and interactivity options.ui-react module in the Building UIs guides.
An inspector for your data.
Inspector component lets you overlay a view of the data in your Store, Indexes, Relationships, and so on. You can even edit the data in place and see it update in your app immediately.
Apply schemas to tables & values.
ValuesSchema or a TablesSchema to a Store to ensure that they are always what you expect by constraining types, and providing defaults. There are even TypeScript definitions that infer API types from the data schemas you apply.
`js
store.setTablesSchema({
pets: {
species: {type: 'string'},
color: {type: 'string'},
sold: {type: 'boolean', default: false},
},
});
store.setRow('pets', 'polly', {species: 'parrot'});
console.log(store.getRow('pets', 'polly'));
// -> {species: 'parrot', sold: false}
store.delTablesSchema();
`
The Read more about these techniques in the Synchronization guides.Synchronize between devices.
MergeableStore type acts as a native CRDT, letting you merge data and synchronize it between clients and systems - or even a server. The synchronization protocol can run over WebSockets, the browser BroadcastChannel, or your own custom synchronization medium.
`js
import {WebSocketServer, WebSocket} from 'ws';
import {createMergeableStore} from 'tinybase';
import {createWsServer} from 'tinybase/synchronizers/synchronizer-ws-server';
import {createWsSynchronizer} from 'tinybase/synchronizers/synchronizer-ws-client';
// On a server machine:
const server = createWsServer(
new WebSocketServer({port: 8040}),
);
// On a client machine:
const store1 = createMergeableStore();
const synchronizer1 = await createWsSynchronizer(
store1,
new WebSocket('ws://localhost:8040'),
);
await synchronizer1.startSync();
// ...
await synchronizer1.destroy();
await server.destroy();
`
You can easily persist a Read more about persisters in the Persistence guides.Persist to storage, databases, & more.
Store between browser page reloads or sessions. You can also synchronize it with a web endpoint, or (if you're using TinyBase in an appropriate environment), load and save it to a file. You can bind TinyBase to various flavors of database, or to Yjs and Automerge CRDT documents.
`js
import {createSessionPersister} from 'tinybase/persisters/persister-browser';
const persister = createSessionPersister(store, 'demo');
await persister.save();
console.log(sessionStorage.getItem('demo'));
// ->
[
{
"pets":{
"fido":{"species":"dog","color":"walnut","sold":false},
"polly":{"species":"parrot","sold":false}
}
},
{"employees":3,"open":true}
];
await persister.destroy();
await sessionStorage.clear();
`
The Accessors and listeners let you sort and paginate the results efficiently, making building rich tabular interfaces easier than ever. In this example, we have two tables: of pets and their owners. They are joined together by the pet's ownerId We access the results by descending price, essentially answering the question: "which is the highest-priced species, and in which state?" Needless to say, the results are reactive too! You can add listeners to queries, and since v7.2, even parameterize them. Read more about Build complex queries with TinyQL.
Queries object lets you query data across tables, with filtering and aggregation - using a SQL-adjacent syntax called TinyQL.Cell. We select the pet's species, and the owner's state, and then aggregate the prices for the combinations.Queries in the v2.0 Release Notes, the Using Queries guide, and the Car Analysis demo and Movie Database demo.
`js
import {createQueries} from 'tinybase';
store
.setTable('pets', {
fido: {species: 'dog', ownerId: '1', price: 5},
rex: {species: 'dog', ownerId: '2', price: 4},
felix: {species: 'cat', ownerId: '2', price: 3},
cujo: {species: 'dog', ownerId: '3', price: 4},
})
.setTable('owners', {
1: {name: 'Alice', state: 'CA'},
2: {name: 'Bob', state: 'CA'},
3: {name: 'Carol', state: 'WA'},
});
const queries = createQueries(store);
queries.setQueryDefinition(
'prices',
'pets',
({select, join, group}) => {
select('species');
select('owners', 'state');
select('price');
join('owners', 'ownerId');
group('price', 'avg').as('avgPrice');
},
);
queries
.getResultSortedRowIds('prices', 'avgPrice', true)
.forEach((rowId) => {
console.log(queries.getResultRow('prices', rowId));
});
// -> {species: 'dog', state: 'CA', avgPrice: 4.5}
// -> {species: 'dog', state: 'WA', avgPrice: 4}
// -> {species: 'cat', state: 'CA', avgPrice: 3}
queries.destroy();
`
A In this example, we create a new table of the pet species, and keep a track of which is most expensive. When we add horses to our pet store, the listener detects that the highest price has changed. Read more about Define metrics and aggregations.
Metrics object makes it easy to keep a running aggregation of Cell values in each Row of a Table. This is useful for counting rows, but also supports averages, ranges of values, or arbitrary aggregations.Metrics in the Using Metrics guide.
`js
import {createMetrics} from 'tinybase';
store.setTable('species', {
dog: {price: 5},
cat: {price: 4},
worm: {price: 1},
});
const metrics = createMetrics(store);
metrics.setMetricDefinition(
'highestPrice', // metricId
'species', // tableId to aggregate
'max', // aggregation
'price', // cellId to aggregate
);
console.log(metrics.getMetric('highestPrice'));
// -> 5
metrics.addMetricListener('highestPrice', () =>
console.log(metrics.getMetric('highestPrice')),
);
store.setCell('species', 'horse', 'price', 20);
// -> 20
metrics.destroy();
`
An In this example, we create an index on the Read more about Create indexes for fast lookups.
Indexes object makes it easy to look up all the Row objects that have a certain value in a Cell.species Cell values. We can then get the the list of distinct Cell value present for that index (known as 'slices'), and the set of Row objects that match each value.Indexes objects are reactive too. So you can set listeners on them just as you do for the data in the underlying Store.Indexes in the Using Indexes guide.
`js
import {createIndexes} from 'tinybase';
const indexes = createIndexes(store);
indexes.setIndexDefinition(
'bySpecies', // indexId
'pets', // tableId to index
'species', // cellId to index
);
console.log(indexes.getSliceIds('bySpecies'));
// -> ['dog', 'cat']
console.log(indexes.getSliceRowIds('bySpecies', 'dog'));
// -> ['fido', 'rex', 'cujo']
indexes.addSliceIdsListener('bySpecies', () =>
console.log(indexes.getSliceIds('bySpecies')),
);
store.setRow('pets', 'lowly', {species: 'worm'});
// -> ['dog', 'cat', 'worm']
indexes.destroy();
`
A In this example, the Like everything else, you can set listeners on Read more about Model table relationships.
Relationships object lets you associate a Row in a local Table with the Id of a Row in a remote Table. You can also reference a table to itself to create linked lists.species Cell of the pets Table is used to create a relationship to the species Table, so that we can access the price of a given pet.Relationships too.Relationships in the Using Relationships guide.
`js
import {createRelationships} from 'tinybase';
const relationships = createRelationships(store);
relationships.setRelationshipDefinition(
'petSpecies', // relationshipId
'pets', // local tableId to link from
'species', // remote tableId to link to
'species', // cellId containing remote key
);
console.log(
store.getCell(
relationships.getRemoteTableId('petSpecies'),
relationships.getRemoteRowId('petSpecies', 'fido'),
'price',
),
);
// -> 5
relationships.destroy();
`
A In this example, we set a checkpoint, then sell one of the pets. Later, the pet is brought back to the shop, and we go back to that checkpoint to revert the store to its previous state. Read more about Set checkpoints for an undo stack.
Checkpoints object lets you set checkpoints on a Store. Move forward and backward through them to create undo and redo functions.Checkpoints in the Using Checkpoints guide.
`js
import {createCheckpoints} from 'tinybase';
const checkpoints = createCheckpoints(store);
store.setCell('pets', 'felix', 'sold', false);
checkpoints.addCheckpoint('pre-sale');
store.setCell('pets', 'felix', 'sold', true);
console.log(store.getCell('pets', 'felix', 'sold'));
// -> true
checkpoints.goBackward();
console.log(store.getCell('pets', 'felix', 'sold'));
// -> false
``
If you use the basic The optional Read more about how TinyBase is structured and packaged in the Architecture guide.Did we say tiny?
store module alone, you'll only add a gzipped 5.4kB to your app. Incrementally add the other modules as you need more functionality, or get it all for 12.1kB.ui-react module is just 5.5kB, the ui-react-dom components are another 3.8kB, and everything is super fast. Life is easy when you have zero dependencies!
| Minified .js.gz | Source .js | |
|---|---|---|
| tinybase/store (minimal) | 5.4kB | 54.6kB |
| tinybase (complete) | 12.1kB | 127.0kB |
| ui-react | 5.5kB | 59.8kB |
| ui-react-dom | 3.8kB | 34.0kB |
Well tested and documented.
TinyBase has 100.0% test coverage, including the code throughout the documentation - even on this page! The guides, demos, and API examples are designed to make it as easy as possible for you to get your TinyBase-powered app up and running.
Read more about how TinyBase is tested in the Unit Testing guide.
| Total | Tested | Coverage | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lines | 2,408 | 2,408 | 100.0% |
| Statements | 2,617 | 2,617 | 100.0% |
| Functions | 1,046 | 1,046 | 100.0% |
| Branches | 906 | 906 | 100.0% |
| Tests | 7,286 | ||
| Assertions | 32,322 | ||
Proud to be supported by:
Excited to be used by:
Meet the family
TinyBase is part of a group of small libraries designed to help make rich client and local-first apps easier to build. Check out the others!
Synclets
An open, storage-agnostic, sync engine development kit.
TinyWidgets
A collection of tiny, reusable, UI components.
TinyTick
A tiny but very useful task orchestrator.
About
Modern apps deserve better. Why trade reactive user experiences to be able to use relational data? Or sacrifice features for bundle size? And why does the cloud do all the work anyway?
Building TinyBase was originally an interesting exercise for me in API design, minification, and documentation. But now it has taken on a life of its own, and has grown beyond my wildest expectations.
It could not have been built without these great projects and friends, and I hope you enjoy using it as much as I do building it!