Flutter database for Dart-native objects 💙 #

Super-fast Flutter database for storing and syncing Dart objects

• 🏁 High performance - improving response rates and enabling real-time applications.
• 🪂 ACID compliant - Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, Durable.
• 💻 Multiplatform - Android, iOS, macOS, Linux, Windows.
• 🌱 Scalable - grows with your app, handling millions of objects with ease.

Easy to use

• 🔗 Relations - object links / relationships are built-in.
• 💐 Queries - filter data as needed, even across relations.
• 🦮 Statically typed - compile time checks & optimizations.
• 📃 Schema migration - change your model with confidence.

Oh, and there is one more thing...

• 😮 Data Sync - keeps data in sync offline or online, between devices and servers.

Sneak peek - persist Dart objects with ObjectBox #

@Entity()
class Person {
  int id;

  String firstName;
  String lastName;

  Person({this.id = 0, required this.firstName, required this.lastName});
}

final store = await openStore(); 
final box = store.box<Person>();

var person = Person(firstName: 'Joe', lastName: 'Green');

final id = box.put(person);  // Create

person = box.get(id)!;       // Read

person.lastName = "Black";
box.put(person);             // Update

box.remove(person.id);       // Delete

// find all people whose name start with letter 'J'
final query = box.query(Person_.firstName.startsWith('J')).build();
final people = query.find();  // find() returns List<Person>

Getting Started #

New: check out our new Getting Started guide.

Depending on if you are building a Flutter or Dart-only app, follow the steps below to start using ObjectBox.

Flutter #

Add these dependencies to your pubspec.yaml:

dependencies:
  objectbox: ^1.2.1
  objectbox_flutter_libs: any
  # for ObjectBox Sync use this dependency instead:
  # objectbox_sync_flutter_libs: any

dev_dependencies:
  build_runner: ^2.0.0
  objectbox_generator: any

• Install the packages: flutter pub get

• For iOS: in the Flutter Runner Xcode project

  • increase the deployment target to at least iOS 11 and,
  • under Architectures, replace ${ARCHS_STANDARD} with arm64 (or $ARCHS_STANDARD_64_BIT). See FAQ for details.

• For sandboxed macOS apps: specify an application group. Check all macos/Runner/*.entitlements files if they contain a <dict> section with correct group ID info. Change the string value to the DEVELOPMENT_TEAM found in Xcode settings, plus an application-specific suffix, for example:

  <key>com.apple.security.application-groups</key>
  <array>
    <string>FGDTDLOBXDJ.demo</string>
  </array>
  

  Next, in the app code, pass the same string when opening the Store, for example: openStore(macosApplicationGroup: 'FGDTDLOBXDJ.demo').
  Note: Pick a short group identifier; there's an internal limit in macOS that requires the complete string to be 19 characters or fewer.

• For Sync + Android: in android/app/build.gradle set minSdkVersion 21 in section android -> defaultConfig.

• In order to run Flutter unit tests locally on your machine, install the native ObjectBox library on your host machine (same as you would if you developed for Dart native, as described in the next section):

  bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/objectbox/objectbox-dart/main/install.sh)
  

Continue with the examples README to learn how to create entities and use the ObjectBox API.

Dart Native #

Add these dependencies to your pubspec.yaml:

dependencies:
  objectbox: ^1.2.1

dev_dependencies:
  build_runner: ^2.0.0
  objectbox_generator: any

• Install the packages: dart pub get

• Install objectbox-c system-wide (use "Git bash" on Windows):

  bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/objectbox/objectbox-dart/main/install.sh)
  

  To install ObjectBox Sync variant of the native library, pass --sync argument to the script:

  bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/objectbox/objectbox-dart/main/install.sh) --sync
  

Continue with the examples README to learn how to create entities and use the ObjectBox API.

Database Performance Benchmarks #

We tested across the four main database operations, CRUD (create, read, update, delete). Each test was run multiple times and executed manually outside of the measured time. Data preparation and evaluation were also done outside of the measured time.

You can run these yourself using our objectbox-dart-performance Flutter benchmark app.

Help wanted 🤩 #

ObjectBox Dart is open to contributions and feedback on GitHub. Either comment on an existing issue or open a new one. For example, if you experience errors or if you have ideas how to improve the API. If you'd like to contribute some code: PRs are more than welcome! The ObjectBox team will try its best to guide you and answer questions.

FAQ #

Q: Flutter iOS builds for armv7 fail with "ObjectBox does not contain that architecture", are 32-bit iOS devices supported?
A: Only 64-bit iOS devices are supported. When ObjectBox was first released for iOS all the latest iOS devices had 64-bit support, so we decided to not ship armv7 support. To resolve the build error, configure Architectures in your Xcode project like described in Getting Started - Flutter.

Q: After adding ObjectBox, the size of the APK increased significantly. Why is that?
A: This is caused by ObjectBox following the official Android recommendations for library compression settings. By default, Flutter apps created from the template have the compression enabled, opposite to the recommendation. The setting to disable library compression affects all native libraries in your app, not just ObjectBox - with Flutter native libraries now taking up the large portion of the increased APK size. ObjectBox library adds about 5.8 MiB uncompressed, and Flutter framework libs increase the uncompressed size by 18.4 MiB.
Q: Should I be worried about the size increase of uncompressed libraries?
A: No, not really. Packaging uncompressed .so files is actually better for users. It uses less storage on device as it avoids copying .so files from the APK to the filesystem during installation and has the added benefit of making updates of your app smaller. For more information about the sizes, see the following table created with ObjectBox v0.14.0 and Flutter v2.0.5 release builds (using the recommended flutter build apk --split-per-abi to build APKs for each ABI):

¹ Requires turning compression back on: in the <application> tag in android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml add

android:extractNativeLibs="true"
tools:replace="android:extractNativeLibs"

to override the ObjectBox settings.

² This is also about the size an APK generated by Google Play would be when uploading an App Bundle (flutter build appbundle).

See also #

• Changelog
• Contribution guidelines

License #

Copyright 2019-2021 ObjectBox Ltd. All rights reserved.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.