fbdb 1.1.1

A Firebird SQL database access library for Dart and Flutter.

A Dart client for the Firebird database management system.

Provides a convenient, high-level asynchronous API based on futures, async methods and streams, as well as low-level wrappers around native Firebird client interfaces.

Requires the availability of the native Firebird client library (depending on the operating system, it's either fbclient.dll, libfbclient.so or libfbclient.dylib), together with its dependencies.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• 1. Features
• 2. Getting started
  • 2.1. Documentation and resources
    • 2.2. Generating API docs
• 3. Usage example
• 4. Additional information
  • 4.1. Issues
    • 4.2. Contributing
    • 4.3. Commercial support
    • 4.4. Roadmap

1. Features

• Fully asynchronous communication with Firebird databases, making it an ideal fit for Flutter GUI applications, as well as server-side Dart applications.

• Two alternative APIs to choose from: a high-level, Dart-idiomatic library or low-level native Firebird client bindings.

• Makes use of advanced Dart concepts: isolates, streams, futures and FFI, at the same time exposing a simple and convenient interface to the application developers.

• Supports database transactions and BLOBs.

• Calls native functions from the official Firebird client dynamic library.

• Free to use and open-source (BSD-3 license).

There is also a simple Android Flutter demo application available in a separate Github repository.

2. Getting started

2.1. Documentation and resources

It is highly recommended to get familiar with the FbDb Programmers Guide and FbDb Architecture Overview.

Should you need to go low-level and interact directly with Firebird interfaces, the FBClient Programmer's Guide may also prove helpful.

In order for your applications using FbDb to work, you need to install the firebird native client library or bundle it together with your application executable. That usually means the proper shared libraries for the target operating system should be placed in an appropriate location in the file system (see the FbDb Programmers Guide for more details). The aforementioned shared libraries are fbclient.dll on Windows, libfbclient.so on Linux and libfbclient.dylib on MacOS, plus their own dependencies (e.g. on Windows the Visual C++ runtime libraries are requred - please refer to the official Firebird client installation guide for more information).

To learn how to use the library, take a look at the simple usage example below, read the aforementioned FbDb Programmers Guide, and get some practise by following the FbDb Tutorial. You may also be interested in some examples.

2.2. Generating API docs

To generate API documentation, clone the repository and run

dart doc

in the root directory of the cloned repo. The generated API documentation will be placed in the docs/API subdirectory.

3. Usage example

The Firebird server installation comes with a ready to use, example database: employee.

To get a taste of FbDb, we'll write a short CLI (console-mode) application to display the names of the first 10 employees from the EMPLOYEE table of the employee database.

Before executing the example code below, provide a valid host, user name and password in place of the defaults in the code.

Start a new Dart console project

dart create -t console fbdbtestproj

and change the implementation to read:

import "package:fbdb/fbdb.dart";

void main() async {
  FbDb db = await FbDb.attach(
    host: "localhost",
    database: "employee",
    user: "SYSDBA",
    password: "masterkey",
  );
  final q = db.query();
  await q.openCursor(
      sql: "select FIRST_NAME, LAST_NAME "
          "from EMPLOYEE "
          "order by LAST_NAME "
          "rows 10 ",
  );
  await for (var r in q.rows()) {
    print("${r['LAST_NAME']}, ${r['FIRST_NAME']}");
  }
  await q.close();
  await db.detach();
}

Add FbDb as the project dependency:

dart pub add fbdb

copy the Firebird client library (on Windows it would mean fbclient.dll and its dependencies: msvcp140.dll and vcruntime140.dll) to the project directory and run the example:

dart run

You should see a list of 10 employee names in your console (or an error message if something went wrong):

Baldwin, Janet
Bender, Oliver H.
Bennet, Ann
Bishop, Dana
Brown, Kelly
Burbank, Jennifer M.
Cook, Kevin
De Souza, Roger
Ferrari, Roberto
Fisher, Pete

4. Additional information

4.1. Issues

Please report issues via Github Issues in the Github repository of the package.

4.2. Contributing

Currently, I'm still working on completing the core functionality I'd like to be included in the library (see the roadmap below), and to improve test coverage.

Therefore, at this moment, I don't accept pull requests.

However, you're most welcome to provide additional tutorials, examples and guides, to help other users get familiar with the library (I'd be happy to put links to them here), as well as to report any bugs you discover, to improve the quality of the library.

4.3. Commercial support

If you need specific commercial support of FbDb, please contact the author (fbdb @at@ hipercom.pl) and something can be worked out.

4.4. Roadmap

The following features are planned for the future releases of FbDb:

• backward compatibility with Firebird 3.0 client library implemented in version 1.1,
• more utility methods, similar to selectOne / selectAll (to save typing),
• multiple explicit concurrent transactions,
• prepared statements optimized for multiple executions,
• support for time with time zone and timestamp with time zone data types,
• abstractions for metadata querying (table structure, constraints, indices, relationships, etc.),
• support for Firebird array types,
• high-level API for Firebird service manager,
• high-level API for Firebird events,
• abstractions for server / database statistics,
• implementation of the Firebird wire protocol to use FbDb without the native client libraries,
• support for Firebird's array data types.