Getting Started

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This documentation is valid only for v4.x version.

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LiteDB is a simple, fast and lightweight embedded .NET document database. LiteDB was inspired by the MongoDB database and its API is very similar to MongoDB's official .NET API.

How to install

LiteDB is a serverless database, so there is no installation. Just copy LiteDB.dll into your Bin folder and add it as Reference. Or, if you prefer, you can install via NuGet: Install-Package LiteDB. If you are running in a web environment, make sure that your IIS user has write permission to the data folder.

First example

A quick example to store and search for documents:

// Create your POCO class entity
public class Customer
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { 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(@"C:\Temp\MyData.db"))
{
    // Get a collection (or create, if doesn't exist)
    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" }, 
        IsActive = 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);
	
    // Index document using document Name property
    col.EnsureIndex(x => x.Name);
	
    // Use LINQ to query documents
    var results = col.Find(x => x.Name.StartsWith("Jo"));

    // Let's create an index in phone numbers (using expression). It's a multikey index
    col.EnsureIndex(x => x.Phones, "$.Phones[*]"); 

    // and now we can query phones
    var r = col.FindOne(x => x.Phones.Contains("8888-5555"));
}

Working with files

Need to store files? No problem: use FileStorage.

// Upload a file from file system to database
db.FileStorage.Upload("my-photo-id", @"C:\Temp\picture-01.jpg");

// And download later
db.FileStorage.Download("my-photo-id", @"C:\Temp\copy-of-picture-01.jpg");