Server: Running an Embedded Instance

RavenDB makes it very easy to be embedded within your application, with RavenDB Embedded package you can integrate your RavenDB server with few easy steps.

EmbeddedServer.Instance.StartServer();
using (var store = EmbeddedServer.Instance.GetDocumentStore("Embedded"))
{
    using (var session = store.OpenSession())
    {
        // Your code here
    }
}

EmbeddedServer.Instance.StartServer();
using (var store = await EmbeddedServer.Instance.GetDocumentStoreAsync("Embedded"))
{
    using (var session = store.OpenAsyncSession())
    {
        // Your code here
    }
}

There is one prerequsite and one recommendation for the Embedded package:

Prerequsite:

• Install .NET Core runtime either manually or along with a RavenDB full version

Recommendation:

• Projects targeting .NET Framework 4.6.1+ that use old packages.config for maintaining NuGet packages should be migrated to PackageReference package management (please refer to section below on how to achieve this)

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
    <startup> 
        <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.7.2" />
    </startup>
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    <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
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      </dependentAssembly>
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        <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-4.0.3.0" newVersion="4.0.3.0" />
      </dependentAssembly>
    </assemblyBinding>
  </runtime>
</configuration>

Installation

• Create a new project (.NET Standard 2.0+, .NET Core 2.0+, .NET Framework 4.6.1+).
• Grab the package from our NuGet

  Install-Package RavenDB.Embedded -Version 4.1.0

Starting the Server

RavenDB Embedded Server is available under EmbeddedServer.Instance. In order to start it call StartServer method.

// Start RavenDB Embedded Server with default options
EmbeddedServer.Instance.StartServer();

For more control on how to start the server just pass to StartServer method a ServerOptions object and that`s it.

EmbeddedServer.Instance.StartServer(new ServerOptions
{
    DataDirectory = "C:\\RavenData",
    ServerUrl = "http://127.0.0.1:8080"
});

EmbeddedServer.Instance.StartServer(new ServerOptions
{
    ServerDirectory = @"C:\RavenDB\Server"
});

Security

RavenDB Embedded support running a secured server. Just run Secured method in ServerOptions object.

We have two overloads to Secured:

var serverOptions = new ServerOptions();
serverOptions.Secured(
    certificate: "PathToServerCertificate",
    certPassword: "CertificatePassword");

The first way to enable authentication is to set certificate with the path to your .pfx server certificate. You may supply the certificate password using certPassword.

var serverOptionsWithExec = new ServerOptions();
var certificate = new X509Certificate2();
serverOptionsWithExec.Secured(
    certExec: "powershell",
    certExecArgs: "C:\\secrets\\give_me_cert.ps1",
    serverCertThumbprint: certificate.Thumbprint,
    clientCert: certificate);

This option is useful when you want to protect your certificate (private key) with other solutions such as "Azure Key Vault", "HashiCorp Vault" or even Hardware-Based Protection. RavenDB will invoke a process you specify, so you can write your own scripts / mini programs and apply whatever logic you need. It creates a clean separation between RavenDB and the secret store in use. RavenDB expects to get the raw binary representation (byte array) of the .pfx certificate through the standard output. In this options you can control on your client certificate and to use in a different certificate for your client.

Document Store

After starting the server you can get the DocumentStore from the Embedded Server and start working with RavenDB. Getting the DocumentStore from The Embedded Server is pretty easy you only need to call GetDocumentStore or GetDocumentStoreAsync with the name of the database you like to work with.

EmbeddedServer.Instance.GetDocumentStore("Embedded");

await EmbeddedServer.Instance.GetDocumentStoreAsync("Embedded");

For more control on the process you can call the methods with DatabaseOptions object.

var databaseOptions = new DatabaseOptions(new DatabaseRecord
{
    DatabaseName = "Embedded"
});
EmbeddedServer.Instance.GetDocumentStore(databaseOptions);

var databaseOptions = new DatabaseOptions(new DatabaseRecord
{
    DatabaseName = "Embedded"
});
await EmbeddedServer.Instance.GetDocumentStoreAsync(databaseOptions);

Get Server URL

The GetServerUriAsync method can be used to retrieve the Embedded server URL. It must be called after server was started, because it waits for the server initialization to complete. The URL can be used for example for creating a custom document store, omitting the GetDocumentStore method entirely.

Uri url = await EmbeddedServer.Instance.GetServerUriAsync();

• You can have only one instance of EmbeddedServer
• Method EmbeddedServer.Instance.OpenStudioInBrowser() can be used to open an browser instance with Studio