Why Choose NeDB? A Lightweight JavaScript Database for Node and Desktop Apps

When developing a program you may need some database capabilities but want to avoid installing a full‑featured database because it is cumbersome and often unnecessary.

Typical Scenarios

(1) You are writing a Node service that should be easily packaged, and a standalone database does not meet this need.

(2) You have built a desktop application with Node Webkit and do not want users to install an external database.

Introducing NeDB

NeDB is a lightweight database written entirely in JavaScript that uses the widely‑known MongoDB API. It is packaged as a Node module and can be required with a single statement.

NeDB can operate purely in memory or persist data to disk, making it comparable to a MongoDB‑style SQLite.

Usage Example

Key Features of NeDB

Implements many MongoDB features.

Supports CRUD operations and upserts.

Provides data persistence.

Offers an expressive query language with dot notation for nested documents, regular expressions, comparison operators ($lt, $lte, $gt, $gte, $in, $nin, $exists), and logical operators ($and, $or, $not).

Document modification methods such as $set, $inc, $push, $pop, $addToSet, $each.

Available a browser version.

Performance

NeDB is not intended to replace full‑scale databases like MongoDB; its goal is to be “good enough.” It can achieve roughly 5,000 writes per second and 25,000 reads per second. If your requirements exceed these numbers, NeDB may not be suitable.

Installation

Install via npm with npm install nedb. The module name is nedb.

Project Repository

https://github.com/louischatriot/nedb