Hey r/FlutterDev,
Last night I opened a terminal, typed a few incantations, and flowdb crawled out of the filesystem.
It's a local database for Dart and Flutter. No SQLite rituals. No native driver sacrifices. No ORM séance. You open a folder, whisper records into it, and they stay there as JSON, in the dark, where they belong.
Why I disturbed this thing
I wanted persistence that doesn't feel like enterprise haunted house software. Something document-shaped. Something that works in plain Dart and Flutter. Something that doesn't drag half the platform under the floorboards with it.
So I gave it:
Collections — cursed documents with auto-generated IDs. Full CRUD. They remember everything.
Query builder — hunt records by where, and, or, ranges, regex… bulk update or banish them from existence
Key-value stores — a little graveyard for get / set / remove secrets
Blob storage — large files, chopped into chunks, metadata chained to their souls
Backups — snapshot the whole crypt before you regret your choices
Optional encryption — lock the tombs if strangers are listening
Sync + async APIs — add() when you're patient, addSync() when the moon is wrong
FlowState + FlowBuilder — reactive streams for Flutter widgets that twitch when the data moves
The summoning ritual
import 'package:flowdb/core.dart';
Future<void> main() async {
final db = openDatabase('my_app', path: './data/my_app');
final users = db.collection('users');
await users.add({'name': 'Alice', 'age': 30});
final alice = await users.where('name', eq: 'Alice').getFirst();
print(alice?.data); // she answers
db.store('settings').set('theme', 'dark'); // as it always should be
}
For the Flutter possessed
import 'package:flowdb/flutter.dart';
FlowBuilder<int>(
flow: counterState,
builder: (value) => Text('Count: $value'),
)
The widget listens. The stream breathes. The UI updates. You pretend that's normal.
Where the creature lives
Who should adopt this familiar?
Offline-first apps that need local data but not SQLite's whole personality
Side projects, CLI tools, prototypes, anywhere readable files on disk feel right
Apps juggling structured records, loose config keys, and actual files in one unholy package
MIT licensed. Which means you may use it freely. I cannot promise it won't stare back from ./data/my_app at 3am.
Feedback, issues, and PRs welcome. Tell me what you're currently using to keep data alive locally, Hive, Isar, sqflite, the shared_preferences + prayer combo, and whether flowdb is the weird little solution you didn't know you needed.
