The Ultimate Guide to Database Drivers and ORMs for Rust
Why Rust is Gaining Popularity
Rust is rapidly gaining traction in the developer community, and for good reason. One of its key selling points is its support for a wide range of databases and storage formats, from file-based storage platforms to memory-based and hybrid databases.
Database Drivers: The Backbone of Data Exchange
A database driver is a crucial piece of code that enables communication between an application and a database. It implements protocols and formats for data exchange, making it possible to store and retrieve data efficiently.
Comparing 11 Popular Database Drivers and ORMs for Rust
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll delve into 11 of the most popular and stable database drivers and ORMs available for Rust. We’ll explore their features, pros, and cons, and provide a convenient table to help you choose the right database for your next Rust project.
Database Drivers
1. MySQL
The mysql crate provides a pure Rust implementation of the MySQL protocol, supporting both text-based and binary protocols. It also offers caching of statements and pools of connections, with TLS support via the nativetls crate.
2. mysql_async
As the async version of the mysql driver, mysql_async offers similar APIs, but with full support for MySQL protocol, including TLS-based encryption. It also allows for connection pool maintenance.
3. tokio_postgres
tokio_postgres is an async implementation of the Postgres protocol, built on top of the tokio async runtime. It supports pipelined execution, sending multiple queries simultaneously, and TLS encryption using nativetls.
4. redis
The redis crate provides both high- and low-level APIs for the Redis database, supporting pipelined queries and connection pool management using the r2d2 crate.
5. rusqlite
rusqlite is a safe wrapper around the SQLite C driver, providing support for hooks like commit and insert. However, it lacks async support.
6. leveldb
leveldb is a key-value store, providing a safe binding for LevelDB. Like rusqlite, it may increase compile time due to its use of bindgen.
7. mongodb
The official MongoDB driver for Rust offers async support, written in pure Rust using the tokio runtime. It supports aggregation and various database operations.
8. memcache
memcache is a Memcached client written in pure Rust, supporting multiple instances of Memcached. However, it lacks features like auto JSON serialization and compression.
9. cdrs
cdrs is a database driver for Cassandra and ScyllaDB, providing a full implementation of the Cassandra protocol and supporting clusters. It also offers TLS support using nativetls.
Object Relational Mappers (ORMs)
1. diesel
diesel is an ORM for Postgres, MySQL, and SQLite, providing a migration utility called diesel_cli. It’s type-safe, but lacks async support and has limited support for group by queries.
2. quaint
quaint is an ORM that supports async operations, providing an AST for creating queries at runtime. It supports multiple SQL databases, including MySQL, Postgres, and SQLite, as well as connection pool management.
Choosing the Right Database Driver
With so many options available, selecting the right database driver for your Rust project can be daunting. To help you make an informed decision, we’ve compiled a convenient table summarizing the key takeaways, pros, cons, and features of each database driver and ORM.
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