How to connect to SurrealDB in a Docker container from a Rust app?

Question

I am trying to figure out how to connect my Rust app to a surrealdb database that is running inside a docker container.

The docs on the SurrealDB website only specify three ways to connect to the database, these are: memory, file, and tikv.

I am running surrealdb on docker as indicated on their website:

docker run --rm -p 8000:8000 surrealdb/surrealdb:latest start

I tried doing something like the following:

let ds = Datastore::new("http://0.0.0.0:8000").await?;

But I am getting the following error:

value: Ds("Unable to load the specified datastore")'

Perhaps it has not been implemented yet?

Answer 1

There is a new rust library for handling connections to surrealdb. This is built and maintained by the same authors of SurrealDB.

https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb.rs

Quote from the repo:

This library enables simple and advanced querying of a remote database from server-side and client-side (via Wasm) code. By default, all connections to SurrealDB are made over WebSockets, and automatically reconnect when the connection is terminated. Connections are automatically closed when they get dropped.

Answer 2

According to the IANA 0.0.0.0 may only serve as a source address, thus your code cannot be correct. If the container is running on the same host, you may need to use localhost (127.0.0.1).

Update

Until recently, it was not possible to connect to a remote SurrealDB instance from Rust, only run an embedded one. Now there is a client library for rust. You can connect to your database over WebSockets like this:

use surrealdb_rs::{Surreal, protocol::Ws};

let client = Surreal::connect::<Ws>("localhost:8000").await?;

Answer 3

You are using the wrong library! The crate surrealdb can only be used to start a database instance of SurrealDB. But it is not a client library.

The official client library crate is called surrealdb-rs.

You will be able to add this to your project with:

(⚠️ The crate is not published yet on crates.io. You can not download it with cargo add yet. ⚠️)

cargo add surrealdb-rs

I would also recommend setting a password for the root user when you start the database. Otherwise, you may run into authentication issues.

docker run --rm -p 8000:8000 surrealdb/surrealdb:latest start --pass root

You would now connect to your running database with Surreal::connect().

use surrealdb_rs::{Result, Surreal};
use surrealdb_rs::param::Root;
use surrealdb_rs::protocol::Ws;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<()> {
    let client = Surreal::connect::<Ws>("localhost:8000").await?;

    // Signin as a namespace, database, or root user
    client.signin(Root {
        username: "root",
        password: "root",
    }).await?;
}

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Until the official library is available on crates.io, you may look into surreal-simple-client. But I would recommend to wait for the official library.