insrcdata

embed your data

insrcdata is a source code generator for embedding tabular data as a static array

Why embedding data in code

Data is at the core of software. A large part of the data must be provided by the editor of the software. Integrating it statically into source code has several advantages :

Access to embedded data is fast since it avoids the performance overhead of reading from file or database.

Access is reliable because the compiler can check data integrity at compile time and will avoid runtime errors during data access.

The program is easier to deploy by having a single file to distribute. And you have more control over the coherence of code and data : the new code will never break because of old data.

Software development is faster because less code is needed to get data and because debugging is far easier.

Why using insrcdata

Programmers can write anything by hand, but innexata will make their lives easier:

Most of the time, domain experts use their own tools to fashion the data to be used by the program. Programmers will have to rewrite the output of these tools in their programming language syntax. This task, tedious and error-prone, will be avoided with insrcdata.

Some features are not that easy to write by hand. For example, insrcdata can generate code for indexed searches and table joins, or automatically compute the width of integer data types to minimize the size of data columns.

The code can be generated for several languages : Rust and C today, other targets are planned.

Usage

insrcdata is a command line tool that will generate source code from data in [.csv](Comma-separated values) file and configuration in a .toml file

You will find several uses in the sample directory. We suggest to start with the HelloWorld tutorial

Installing

Note that installation is not needed cargo build script

You can build insrcdata from source. You will need Rust compiler suite.

In a terminal, go at the root of insrcdata source and type :

cargo build

you will find insrcdata executable in the target/debug subdirectory.

Data source csv file

You will use one file per table. The first line of the file is a header that defines the names of the columns.
The following lines are the rows of the array that will implement the table.

Configuration file

First level sections correspond to the tables defined in the project. Second level sections are the columns of the tables. More information can be found in template.toml at the root of the repository.

The wiki contains detailled documentation.

Running insrcdata

Type the following command in a terminal window :

insrcdata myconfig.toml

where myconfig.toml is the path of your configuation file

insrcdata --help to get the list of options.

License

Source code is available under GNU General Public License v3.0 or later.

Output files generated by insrcdata are not covered by the GNU GPL, and can be distributed under any license of the user's choice, while respecting the copyright of the input data.

Contact : insrcdata@gmail.com