ents

A minimal, type-safe entity framework for Rust that provides a simple and extensible way to work with entities and their relationships.

Overview

ents is the core crate that defines the foundational traits and types for building entity-based applications. It provides the abstractions needed to work with entities, edges (relationships), and database operations without being tied to any specific storage backend.

Features

• Minimal API: Simple trait-based design requiring only two main traits to implement
  • Ent: Core entity trait with serialization support via typetag
  • EntWithEdges: Define relationships between entities
• Type-safe: Leverages Rust's type system for compile-time safety
• Storage-agnostic: Define your entities once, use with any backend implementation
• Edge relationships: Built-in support for querying and managing entity relationships
• Transactional API: Support for ACID transactions through the Transactional trait

Core Concepts

Entities (Ent trait)

An entity is any type that implements the Ent trait. Each entity has:

• A unique identifier (Id)
• A timestamp for tracking updates (last_updated)
• Serialization support for persistence

Edges

Edges represent relationships between entities. The framework provides:

• EdgeProvider: Interface for managing edges
• EdgeQuery: Flexible querying of relationships
• EdgeDraft: Transactional edge mutations