beaver-db 0.8.0

Fast, embedded, and multi-modal DB based on SQLite for AI-powered applications.

beaver 🦫

A fast, single-file, multi-modal database for Python, built with the standard sqlite3 library.

beaver is the Backend for Embedded, All-in-one Vector, Entity, and Relationship storage. It's a simple, local, and embedded database designed to manage complex, modern data types without requiring a database server, built on top of SQLite.

Design Philosophy

beaver is built with a minimalistic philosophy for small, local use cases where a full-blown database server would be overkill.

• Minimalistic & Zero-Dependency: Uses only Python's standard libraries (sqlite3) and numpy/scipy.
• Synchronous & Thread-Safe: Designed for simplicity and safety in multi-threaded environments.
• Built for Local Applications: Perfect for local AI tools, RAG prototypes, chatbots, and desktop utilities that need persistent, structured data without network overhead.
• Fast by Default: It's built on SQLite, which is famously fast and reliable for local applications. The vector search is accelerated with an in-memory k-d tree.
• Standard Relational Interface: While beaver provides high-level features, you can always use the same SQLite file for normal relational tasks with standard SQL.

Core Features

• Synchronous Pub/Sub: A simple, thread-safe, Redis-like publish-subscribe system for real-time messaging.
• Namespaced Key-Value Dictionaries: A Pythonic, dictionary-like interface for storing any JSON-serializable object within separate namespaces with optional TTL for cache implementations.
• Pythonic List Management: A fluent, Redis-like interface for managing persistent, ordered lists.
• Persistent Priority Queue: A high-performance, persistent queue that always returns the item with the highest priority, perfect for task management.
• Efficient Vector Storage & Search: Store vector embeddings and perform fast approximate nearest neighbor searches using an in-memory k-d tree.
• Full-Text Search: Automatically index and search through document metadata using SQLite's powerful FTS5 engine.
• Graph Traversal: Create relationships between documents and traverse the graph to find neighbors or perform multi-hop walks.
• Single-File & Portable: All data is stored in a single SQLite file, making it incredibly easy to move, back up, or embed in your application.

Installation

pip install beaver-db

Quickstart

Get up and running in 30 seconds. This example showcases a dictionary, a list, and full-text search in a single script.

from beaver import BeaverDB, Document

# 1. Initialize the database
db = BeaverDB("data.db")

# 2. Use a namespaced dictionary for app configuration
config = db.dict("app_config")
config["theme"] = "dark"
print(f"Theme set to: {config['theme']}")

# 3. Use a persistent list to manage a task queue
tasks = db.list("daily_tasks")
tasks.push("Write the project report")
tasks.push("Deploy the new feature")
print(f"First task is: {tasks[0]}")

# 4. Use a collection for document storage and search
articles = db.collection("articles")
doc = Document(
    id="sqlite-001",
    content="SQLite is a powerful embedded database ideal for local apps."
)
articles.index(doc)

# Perform a full-text search
results = articles.match(query="database")
top_doc, rank = results[0]
print(f"FTS Result: '{top_doc.content}'")

db.close()

Things You Can Build with Beaver

Here are a few ideas to inspire your next project, showcasing how to combine Beaver's features to build powerful local applications.

1. AI Agent Task Management

Use a persistent priority queue to manage tasks for an AI agent. This ensures the agent always works on the most important task first, even if the application restarts.

tasks = db.queue("agent_tasks")

# Tasks are added with a priority (lower is higher)
tasks.put({"action": "summarize_news"}, priority=10)
tasks.put({"action": "respond_to_user"}, priority=1)
tasks.put({"action": "run_backup"}, priority=20)

# The agent retrieves the highest-priority task
next_task = tasks.get() # -> Returns the "respond_to_user" task
print(f"Agent's next task: {next_task.data['action']}")

2. User Authentication and Profile Store

Use a namespaced dictionary to create a simple and secure user store. The key can be the username, and the value can be a dictionary containing the hashed password and other profile information.

users = db.dict("user_profiles")

# Create a new user
users["alice"] = {
    "hashed_password": "...",
    "email": "[e-mail]",
    "permissions": ["read", "write"]
}

# Retrieve a user's profile
alice_profile = users.get("alice")

3. Chatbot Conversation History

A persistent list is perfect for storing the history of a conversation. Each time the user or the bot sends a message, just push it to the list. This maintains a chronological record of the entire dialogue.

chat_history = db.list("conversation_with_user_123")

chat_history.push({"role": "user", "content": "Hello, Beaver!"})
chat_history.push({"role": "assistant", "content": "Hello! How can I help you today?"})

# Retrieve the full conversation
for message in chat_history:
    print(f"{message['role']}: {message['content']}")

4. Build a RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) System

Combine vector search and full-text search to build a powerful RAG pipeline for your local documents.

# Get context for a user query like "fast python web frameworks"
vector_results = [doc for doc, _ in docs.search(vector=query_vector)]
text_results = [doc for doc, _ in docs.match(query="python web framework")]

# Combine and rerank for the best context
from beaver.collections import rerank
best_context = rerank(vector_results, text_results, weights=[0.6, 0.4])

5. Caching for Expensive API Calls

Leverage a dictionary with a TTL (Time-To-Live) to cache the results of slow network requests. This can dramatically speed up your application and reduce your reliance on external services.

api_cache = db.dict("external_api_cache")

# Check the cache first
response = api_cache.get("weather_new_york")
if response is None:
    # If not in cache, make the real API call
    response = make_slow_weather_api_call("New York")
    # Cache the result for 1 hour
    api_cache.set("weather_new_york", response, ttl_seconds=3600)

More Examples

For more in-depth examples, check out the scripts in the examples/ directory:

• examples/kvstore.py: A comprehensive demo of the namespaced dictionary feature.
• examples/list.py: Shows the full capabilities of the persistent list, including slicing and in-place updates.
• examples/queue.py: A practical example of using the persistent priority queue for task management.
• examples/vector.py: Demonstrates how to index and search vector embeddings, including upserts.
• examples/fts.py: A detailed look at full-text search, including targeted searches on specific metadata fields.
• examples/graph.py: Shows how to create relationships between documents and perform multi-hop graph traversals.
• examples/pubsub.py: A demonstration of the synchronous, thread-safe publish/subscribe system.
• examples/cache.py: A practical example of using a dictionary with TTL as a cache for API calls.
• examples/rerank.py: Shows how to combine results from vector and text search for more refined results.

Roadmap

These are some of the features and improvements planned for future releases:

• Fuzzy search: Implement fuzzy matching capabilities for text search.
• Faster ANN: Explore integrating more advanced ANN libraries like faiss for improved vector search performance.
• Improved Pub/Sub: Fan-out implementation with a more Pythonic API.
• Async API: Comprehensive async support with on-demand wrappers for all collections.

Check out the roadmap for a detailed list of upcoming features and design ideas.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.