LuaDB – A pure Lua RDBMS engine with B+Trees, WAL, and Postgres wire protocol

COLD_WAR — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:33:49 +0000

I built LuaDB – an embeddable relational database written 100% from scratch in pure Lua (no C extensions or external dependencies).

Key features:

Slotted 4KB binary pages with B+Tree primary/secondary indexing
ACID transactions via Write-Ahead Logging (WAL)
Built-in PostgreSQL Wire Protocol server (connect via psql or DBeaver)
Pluggable VFS storage (Local disk, RAM, and Amazon S3 with AWS SigV4)
Native JSON/JSONB extractions (-> / ->>), Foreign Keys with ON DELETE CASCADE, and WITH CTEs.
Runs anywhere Lua runs (Lua 5.1+, 5.4, 5.5, LuaJIT). Feedback and technical questions welcome!
https://github.com/jncastilho/luadb

LuaDB: A pure Lua embeddable SQL database for game save files, state tracking, and cloud sync

COLD_WAR — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 23:39:58 +0000

Wanted to share a project I've been building called LuaDB: a lightweight, zero-dependency embeddable database system written in pure Lua.

Why pure Lua? Cross-platform embedding without needing C bindings or compiling native SQLite shared libraries (great for LÖVE, Roblox, OpenResty, or embedded devices).

What it includes:

Full B+Tree index engine on 4KB slotted binary pages
Write-Ahead Logging (BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK)
Native PostgreSQL wire protocol gateway (run luajit bin/luadb_server.lua and connect with psql)
Native JSONB operators (details->'address'->>'city')
Foreign Keys with ON DELETE CASCADE and ALTER TABLE migrations
Master-master cluster replication with hinted handoff
Check out the GitHub repo: https://github.com/jncastilho/luadb

Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback!

DEV Community: COLD_WAR

LuaDB – A pure Lua RDBMS engine with B+Trees, WAL, and Postgres wire protocol

LuaDB: A pure Lua embeddable SQL database for game save files, state tracking, and cloud sync