An extremely simple data store intended for rapid prototyping or extremely light-weight projects where simple data persistence is required but a full DB is overkill.

Why bother? The main itches driving this project were wanting:

• serverless
• minimal config required. No creating databases, setting user permissions etc
• minimal external dependencies
• no attributes / etc imposed on persisted classes
• data stored in a simple readable format (i.e. JSON) for ease of both
  • rapid prototyping (edit documents in any text editor); and
  • easily read and verify results in automated tests

• .Net Framework 3.5 Client Profile
• NServiceKit.Text

Works on Mono for Linux, untested in other non-Windows environments.

It does use some C#6 features so assumes Visual Studio 2015 or equivalent if intending to edit or build from source.

Set your expectations low. It is NOT a full fledged database by any stretch of the imagination. It does not currently, nor is it ever likely to, support things like:

• Querying
• Relationships
• Schemaless collections
• Indexing
• Composite keys
• Logging
• Analytics

...or any of the various other things you probably take for granted each time you interact with a database.

It is not going to happen in the immediately foreseeable future but it may, depending on my needs, one day support:

• Transactions
• Configure primary key by func (i.e. complex/composite keys possible)
• Auto-number / auto-generated IDs (only for int and GUID types)

One more time just in case you missed it earlier - THIS IS NOT A DATABASE!

private class Widget
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Value { get; set; }
}

var db = new LocalDataStore("WidgetSoftInventory");            

// Storage
db.Save(new Widget {Id = 1337, Value = value});

// Retrieval by ID
var result = db.Get<Widget>(1337);

// Retrieval of all items of given type
var results = db.GetAll<Widget>();

var db = new LocalDataStore("AlbatrossAirlines");

// Change default key property from "Id"
db.Config.DefaultKeyProperty = "AAID";

// Change key property only for specific types
db.Configure<VipCustomer>(keyName: "FrequentFlyerNumber");

// Changing data storage root path from the default (in %AppData%\SimpleDataStore)
db.Config.DataStoreRootPath = Environment.GetCommandLineArgs()[0];
db.Config.DataStoreRootPath = @"D:\CI\Albatross\TestData";

// Changing the file extension for each document (default is ".json")
db.Config.RecordFileExtension = ".txt";

// Use full class name for storing documents. This is to avoid conflicts in similarly
// named classes (e.g. "Foo.Contact" and "Widget.Domain.Contact")
db.Config.UseFullNameAsFolder = true;

// Override the class name entirely for the data storage folder
db.Configure<CustomerViewmodel>(folderName: "customers");

// Get folder where all instances of a specific class will be persisted
var widgetJsonFolder = db.DataPath<Widget>();

// Get location on disk where a specific instance will be persisted
var widget = new Widget{ Id = 1337, Value = "o hai" };
var widgetJsonPath = db.GetFileName(widget);

// Deleting all of a single type (roughly equivalent to "DELETE FROM Widget;")
db.DeleteFolder<Widget>();

// Deleting the entire data store
db.DeleteDataStore();

// Automatically delete data store when instance is disposed
db.Config.CleanupOnExit = true;
using(var db = new LocalDataStore("SandwichFactory")
{
    db.Save(new Order {Id = 1, Comments = "Slice off crusts please"});
    db.Save(new Order {Id = 2, Comments = "Don't forget the salt and pepper"});

    // TODO: Get by ID 2 and assert that result is as expected

} // Data store will be deleted here

Default configuration is intended to be as quick and painless as possible to get up and running. This means making some small assumptions:

• Classes use an Id property as a unique identifier / primary key
• Data store folders (i.e. 'tables' in RDBMS land) are named after the class they contain

There is no distinction between Create or Update in a traditional CRUD sense because - that's right - this is not a database. Anything you save overwrites anything else in that collection which has the same key.

NServiceKit.Text: view license

Other than for that, the rest of this code is licensed under do-whatever-you-want license. Use at your own risk, no liabilities accepted blah blah blah.