WiseJSON — Embedded JSON Database for Node.js with WAL & Checkpoints

#javascript #node #opensource #database

Hey everyone! 👋

After years of making CLI tools and small Node.js scripts, I kept running into the same problem:

“How do I reliably store local data without spinning up a full database engine?”

Most of the existing JSON databases for Node.js are either:

too simple (no crash protection)
too slow
or completely skip important features like WAL or fsync

🧠 So I built WiseJSON

A reliable, segment-based embedded JSON database for Node.js.

With full support for:

✅ WAL (Write-Ahead Logging)

✅ Checkpoints (segment-based, fast recovery)

✅ fsync for safety

✅ In-memory indexes (including unique ones)

✅ CLI support

✅ Zero dependencies except uuid

✅ pkg-friendly (can be bundled into binaries)

🔧 What makes WiseJSON different?

Everything is stored in the filesystem — no daemon, no server
You can use it in CLI apps, scripts, microservices
Recovery is safe even after crashes or power loss
Checkpoints are written in segments to keep things scalable

🚀 Install & Use

npm install wise-json-db

npx wise-json insert users name=Alice email=[email protected]
npx wise-json list users

Example .js usage:

const WiseJSON = require('wise-json-db');

const db = new WiseJSON('./my-db');

(async () => {
  const users = await db.collection('users');
  await users.createIndex('email', { unique: true });

  const user = await users.insert({ name: 'Alice', email: '[email protected]' });
  console.log(user._id);

  await db.close();
})();