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Flutter Integration

Grafeo works as an embedded database inside Flutter apps via dart:ffi. This guide covers building the native library and bundling it for each platform.

Building grafeo-c

Build the shared library with the lpg profile, which includes GQL, Cypher, Gremlin, SQL/PGQ, storage, and regex support:

cargo build --release -p grafeo-c --features lpg

Other available profiles include embedded (GQL + AI + algorithms), rdf (SPARQL + GraphQL + triple store), and full (all languages + AI + triple store). See the feature flags documentation for details.

The output location depends on your host OS:

OS Output path
Windows target/release/grafeo_c.dll
macOS target/release/libgrafeo_c.dylib
Linux target/release/libgrafeo_c.so

Platform Setup

Windows

Copy grafeo_c.dll next to the Flutter runner executable:

my_app/
  windows/
    runner/
      grafeo_c.dll

To automate this in release builds, add to windows/CMakeLists.txt (before the final install block):

install(FILES "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/runner/grafeo_c.dll"
  DESTINATION "${INSTALL_BUNDLE_LIB_DIR}"
  COMPONENT Runtime)

macOS

Copy libgrafeo_c.dylib into the macOS bundle:

my_app/
  macos/
    Frameworks/
      libgrafeo_c.dylib

Update the Xcode project (via macos/Runner.xcodeproj) to include the dylib in the Copy Bundle Resources or Embed Frameworks build phase. The library must be ad-hoc signed for local development:

codesign --force --sign - libgrafeo_c.dylib

Linux

Copy libgrafeo_c.so into the bundle lib directory:

my_app/
  linux/
    bundle/
      lib/
        libgrafeo_c.so

The Flutter Linux runner sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include bundle/lib/ at startup, so the library is found automatically.

Android / iOS

Mobile platforms are not yet supported

Prebuilt native binaries for iOS and Android are not published. The Dart FFI loader has platform detection for iOS (DynamicLibrary.process() for statically linked builds) and Android (libgrafeo_c.so), but you must cross-compile grafeo-c yourself using cargo-ndk (Android) or cargo-lipo (iOS). This is an advanced workflow that requires a working Rust cross-compilation toolchain for each target architecture.

Track progress in the Grafeo roadmap.

Custom Library Path

If the native library is not in the default search path, pass an explicit path:

final db = GrafeoDB.open(
  dbPath,
  libraryPath: '/opt/grafeo/lib/libgrafeo_c.so',
);

All factory constructors (memory, open, openSingleFile, openReadOnly) accept the optional libraryPath parameter.

Use open with the application documents directory from the path_provider package (openSingleFile is the same since 0.6):

import 'package:path_provider/path_provider.dart';
import 'package:grafeo/grafeo.dart';

Future<GrafeoDB> openDatabase() async {
  final dir = await getApplicationDocumentsDirectory();
  final dbPath = '${dir.path}/my_app.grafeo';
  return GrafeoDB.open(dbPath);
}

This stores all data in a single .grafeo file with a sidecar WAL for crash safety.

Isolate Considerations

All GrafeoDB FFI calls are synchronous and block the calling isolate. For queries that may take more than a few milliseconds, run them in a separate isolate using Isolate.run or compute:

final rows = await Isolate.run(() {
  final db = GrafeoDB.openReadOnly('/path/to/data.grafeo');
  try {
    final result = db.execute('MATCH (n:Person) RETURN n.name LIMIT 100');
    return result.rows;
  } finally {
    db.close();
  }
});

For write-heavy workloads, open the database once in a long-lived isolate and communicate via SendPort / ReceivePort.