Documentation

sorla-db is a document database that lives in memory, in the browser or in Node. You store plain JavaScript objects, query them with the MongoDB query language you may already know, and get schema validation, change events, live queries for React / Vue / Svelte / Angular, form binding, and loading from a backend over Server-Sent Events or a WebSocket. No server, no setup, no dependencies.

const sorla = require('sorla-db');

const app = new sorla();
app.useDb('shop');
app.db.createCollection('products');

app.db.products.insertMany([
  { name: 'Coffee', price: 12.5, tags: ['hot'] },
  { name: 'Tea', price: 8, tags: ['hot', 'herbal'] },
  { name: 'Juice', price: 9.9, tags: ['cold'] }
]);

app.db.products.find({ price: { $lt: 10 } }).sort({ price: 1 }).toArray();
// [{ _id: '…', name: 'Tea', price: 8, … }, { _id: '…', name: 'Juice', price: 9.9, … }]

• Familiar. find, updateOne, $in, $regex, $set, bulkWrite… The MongoDB vocabulary, so there is little to learn and queries can be shared with a MongoDB backend.
• Safe by default. You always get copies; stored documents cannot be changed by accident. Batches are validated before anything is written.
• Fast. An _id index, cursors that copy only what you read, updates that copy only what changed. 100 000 documents are comfortable.
• Reactive. watch() keeps a query current, and the bindings turn it into a React hook, a Vue ref, a Svelte store or an Angular signal.
• Connected. Load a million rows in blocks over Server-Sent Events, or page and receive live changes over a WebSocket.
• Small. One 54 kB browser file, or a CommonJS / ES module package with TypeScript types.

npm

npm install sorla-db

// CommonJS (Node, older bundlers)
const sorla = require('sorla-db');

// ES modules (Vite, webpack, esbuild, Node with "type": "module")
import sorla from 'sorla-db';
// or: import { sorla } from 'sorla-db';

A script tag, no build step

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/sorla-db@1/dist/sorla.min.js"></script>
<script>
  const app = new window.sorla();   // the bundle registers the class as window.sorla
  app.useDb('demo');
</script>

The same file is in node_modules/sorla-db/dist/sorla.min.js if you serve it yourself. unpkg works too: https://unpkg.com/sorla-db@1/dist/sorla.min.js.

Framework bindings

The bindings are part of the package; install the framework you use as usual.

import { useQuery } from 'sorla-db/react';     // React 18+
import { useQuery } from 'sorla-db/vue';       // Vue 3.3+
import { query } from 'sorla-db/svelte';       // Svelte 3, 4, 5
import { querySignal } from 'sorla-db/angular'; // Angular 16+

See Live queries and frameworks.

Requirements

Environment	Version
Browsers	any current browser (ES2020)
Node	18 or later (fetch, ReadableStream, structuredClone); the test suite runs on Node 24
TypeScript	declarations included (index.d.ts)

const app = new sorla();

// 1. a database: useDb creates it when needed and selects it
app.useDb('todo');

// 2. a collection, optionally with a schema
app.db.createCollection('tasks', {
  required: ['title'],
  properties: {
    title: { type: 'string', minLength: 1 },
    done: { type: 'boolean', default: false },
    due: { type: ['string', 'null'], format: 'date' }
  }
});
const tasks = app.db.tasks;

// 3. insert: copies are stored, ids are generated (uuid v4) unless you give _id
const id = tasks.insertOne({ title: 'Write the docs', due: '2026-11-01' });
tasks.insertMany([{ title: 'Ship it' }, { title: 'Celebrate', due: '2026-11-02' }]);

// 4. query
tasks.find({ done: false }).sort({ due: 1 }).toArray();
tasks.findOne({ _id: id });            // { _id, title: 'Write the docs', done: false, due: '2026-11-01' }
tasks.count({ due: { $exists: true } });

// 5. change and react
tasks.on('change', event => console.log(event.type, event.ids));
tasks.updateOne({ _id: id }, { $set: { done: true } });   // logs: update [id]
tasks.deleteMany({ done: true });                         // logs: delete [id]

Sorting puts missing and null values last (due above), in both directions. That is configurable, see Cursors.

I want to…	Read
organize data in databases and collections	Databases and collections
understand ids, copies and what can be stored	Documents and inserting
write queries	Querying
sort, page, project and read results	Cursors
change and remove data, in bulk too	Updating and deleting
reject bad data	Schema validation
connect an HTML form	Forms
react to changes	Events and Live queries
load from a backend	Server sync: SSE and WebSocket
poke around in the browser console	Using the console
type everything	TypeScript
handle a lot of data	Performance
run the tests or contribute	Testing and development
copy a working recipe	Cookbook and FAQ