GUN is a realtime, distributed, offline-first, graph database engine. Lightweight and powerful, at just ~9KB gzipped.
Why?
- Realtime - It may be trivial to get realtime updates with socket.io or something, but what you do not get is state synchronization. GUN does this for you out of the box, assuring that two users' simultaneous updates won't concurrently break each other.
- Distributed - GUN is peer-to-peer by design, meaning you have no centralized database server to maintain or that could crash. This lets you sleep through the night without worrying about database DevOps - we call this "NoDB". From that, you can build decentralized, federated, or centralized apps.
- Offline-first - GUN works even if your internet or cell reception doesn't. Users can still plug away and save data as normal, and then when the network comes back online GUN will automatically synchronize all the changes and handle any conflicts for you.
- Graph - Most databases force you to bend over backwards to match their storage constraints. But graphs are different, they let you have any data structure you want. Whether that be traditional tables with relations, document oriented trees, or tons of circular references. You choose.
Quickstart
Try the interactive tutorial in the browser (5min ~ average developer). Or run the NodeJS demo example apps (5min ~ average developer).
Jump right into the gun playground and start testing whatever functions you want.
Quick note: All active development is happening on 0.5
branch, which has the upcoming 30M+ ops/sec performance improvements!
Demos
-
The above examples are included in this repo. You can run them locally by running the following commands in your terminal or on your command line:
npm install gun cd node_modules/gun node examples/http.js 8080
Then visit http://localhost:8080 in your browser.
If that did not work it is probably because npm installed it to a global directory. To fix that try
mkdir node_modules
in your desired directory and re-run the above commands. You also might have to addsudo
in front of the commands.
Videos
- Fault tolerance (01:01)
- Saving relational or document based data (06:59)
- Everything you want to know about GUN (57:50) 2x speed recommended.
- GUN's YouTube channel also has videos.
Projects
- GUN users are encouraged to add their projects to this running projects list.
Docs & Tradeoffs
- Getting Started with GUN Guide.
- API documentation and examples' source code.
- GUN is an AP system which means you should not use it for banking apps, learn more here.
- Check out and add example code snippets —including micro-modules— to address specific situations.
Modules
GUN is designed to be as minimal as possible, with any additional functionality being provided via modules. Please refer to the modules page for a list of existing extensions. Please refer to the gun-extensions repo to see what extensions have been requested or to request an extension.
How can I help make gun even more awesome?
- Star this repo
- Follow us and share your appreciation via Gitter, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook
- Share projects you've written
- Build extensions or squish bugs - If you are working on an extension, familiarize yourself with GUN's Module API
License
Designed with ♥ by Mark Nadal, the gun team, and many amazing contributors. Liberally licensed under Zlib / MIT / Apache 2.0.
Contributors
Thanks to the following people who have contributed to GUN, via code, issues, or conversation (this list has quickly become tremendously behind! We'll probably turn this into a dedicated wiki page so you can add yourself):
agborkowski; alexlafroscia; anubiann00b; bromagosa; coolaj86; d-oliveros, danscan; forrestjt (file.js); gedw99; HelloCodeMing; JosePedroDias (graph visualizer); jveres (todoMVC); ndarilek; onetom; phpnode; PsychoLlama; RangerMauve (schema); riston; rootsical; rrrene; sbeleidy ssr1ram; Stefdv (Polymer/web components); Xe; zot; ayurmedia;
This list of contributors was manually compiled and alphabetically sorted. If we missed you, please submit an issue so we can get you added!
Changelog
Also see the current Release List and Tag List for quick access to relevant versions.