nats_for_dart

Idiomatic Dart bindings for NATS — pub/sub, JetStream, and KeyValue built on nats.c v3.12.0, with no system OpenSSL required.

⚡ Features

Pub/sub — synchronous and asynchronous subscriptions, wildcard subjects (foo.*, foo.>)
Request-reply — single-call request/response pattern
JetStream — durable streams, consumers, publish with ack, and pull subscribe
KeyValue store — get, put, delete, watch, history, and optimistic concurrency with revision checks
Connection lifecycle — disconnect, reconnect, close, and async error event streams

📱 Supported platforms

Platform	Supported
Desktop	✅
Mobile	❌
Web	❌

📦 Installation

Add the package to your pubspec.yaml:

dependencies:
  nats_for_dart: ^0.1.0

Then run:

dart pub get

The native libnats shared library is compiled on first build. This may take some time depending on your machine while LibreSSL and nats.c are compiled from source.

🚀 Quick Start

import 'package:nats_for_dart/nats_for_dart.dart';

void main() {
  // 1. Initialise the library once per process.
  NatsLibrary.init();

  final client = NatsClient.connect('nats://localhost:4222');

  // 2. Subscribe synchronously on a subject.
  final sub = client.subscribeSync('greet.hello');

  // 3. Publish a message.
  client.publish('greet.hello', 'Hello, NATS!');

  // 4. Receive the next message (blocks up to 2 seconds).
  final msg = sub.nextMessage(timeout: const Duration(seconds: 2));
  print('${msg.subject}: ${msg.dataAsString}');
  // → greet.hello: Hello, NATS!

  // 5. Clean up.
  sub.close();
  client.close();
  NatsLibrary.close(timeoutMs: 5000);
}

For async (Stream-based) subscriptions, see example/async_subscriber.dart. For JetStream and KeyValue examples, see Examples below.

💡 Examples

Example	Description	Run
`pubsub_sync.dart`	Synchronous pub/sub — publish and receive in one process	`dart run example/pubsub_sync.dart`
`async_subscriber.dart`	Async subscription via Dart `Stream` with wildcard subject	`dart run example/async_subscriber.dart`
`lifecycle_demo.dart`	Connection lifecycle events — stop/restart the server while running to observe	`dart run example/lifecycle_demo.dart`
`jetstream_pub_sub.dart`	JetStream stream creation, publish with ack, and pull subscribe	`dart run example/jetstream_pub_sub.dart`
`kv_demo.dart`	KeyValue CRUD, optimistic update, watch, history, delete, and purge	`dart run example/kv_demo.dart`

pubsub_sync.dart and async_subscriber.dart require only a plain nats-server. All other examples require nats-server -js (JetStream enabled).

🤖 A note on AI assistance

This package was developed with heavy use of AI tooling (Claude Code). The implementation has been reviewed carefully, but given the early stage (v0.1.0) and the nature of AI-assisted development, you should feel comfortable scrutinising any part of the code. If something looks wrong, surprising, or suboptimal — it very well might be. Issues and PRs are welcome. 🙏

🗺️ Roadmap

nats_for_dart v0.1.0 covers the core use cases. The following tracks progress toward production readiness and full parity with the NATS C client.

🔐 Production Essentials

These features are required for secure, production-grade deployments.

Feature	Why it matters
TLS Enable/Disable	Encrypted connections for any non-development deployment
CA Certificates	Server identity verification — prevents MITM attacks
Client Certificates (mTLS)	Mutual TLS authentication for zero-trust environments
TLS Configuration	Cipher selection, hostname verification, and skip-verify options
Message Headers	Metadata, distributed tracing, and deduplication — used widely in NATS ecosystems

✨ Coming Next

These additions complete the JetStream management API and round out connection options.

Feature	Why it matters
Consumer Update	FFI binding already exists — only the Dart wrapper is missing
Stream Listing	Discover and manage all streams programmatically
Consumer Listing	Enumerate consumers per stream for monitoring and tooling
Reconnect Jitter	Prevents thundering-herd reconnects in large deployments
No Echo	Suppress delivery of your own published messages to your own subscribers
Direct NKey Auth	Alternative to credentials files — sign challenges directly with an NKey seed

Priority 3 and 4 — Future Additions

Valuable Additions

Feature	Why it matters
Object Store	Large object (file/blob) storage over NATS via JetStream
Dynamic Server Discovery	Auto-discover new cluster members without restarting
Lame Duck Mode Callback	Graceful shutdown notification from departing servers
Allow/Disable Reconnect	Explicit control over whether reconnection is attempted
Custom Reconnect Delay	Callback-driven exponential backoff or custom logic
Fail Requests on Disconnect	Fail-fast behavior instead of buffering requests
Ordered Consumers	Simplified exactly-once-delivery consumer configuration

Nice to Have

Feature	Why it matters
Token Refresh Handler	Dynamic token generation on each reconnect
Custom Credentials Callback	Generate credentials programmatically
Send As Soon As Possible	TCP_NODELAY for latency-sensitive workloads
Retry on Failed Connect	Auto-retry the initial connection attempt
Max Pending Msgs/Bytes	Per-subscription flow control
Micro Service API	Built-in NATS microservice framework (`micro_AddService`, etc.)
WebSocket Transport	Browser-compatible NATS connections

🧑‍💻 Contributing

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup, pre-commit hooks, and instructions for upgrading the vendored nats.c and LibreSSL libraries.

⚖️ License

This package is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

Third-Party Notices

This package vendors the following C libraries, compiled into the native libnats shared library:

LibreSSL includes code derived from OpenSSL and SSLeay. In compliance with those licenses:

This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit (http://www.openssl.org/)

This product includes cryptographic software written by Eric Young (eay@cryptsoft.com).

See NOTICE for full third-party attribution notices.