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The Book of Babar

Ergonomic Postgres for Rust. Typed, async, no surprises.

The Babar brand sheet — wordmark, palette, and the herd at work

babar is a typed, async Postgres driver for Tokio that speaks the wire protocol directly. No libpq. No magic. Just queries, codecs, and clear errors — composed the way you’d compose any other Rust value.

cargo add babar

Why babar

PillarHeadlineWhat you get
Ergonomic by DesignRead it once, understand it forever.Queries are typed values. Codecs are imported by name. There is one way to start a transaction, one way to bind a parameter, one way to run a migration.
Postgres at HeartThe wire protocol, faithfully.Extended-protocol prepares, binary results, SCRAM-SHA-256, channel binding over TLS, and binary COPY FROM STDIN for bulk ingest. No translation layer between you and the server.
Built for the HerdPredictable under load.A single background task owns the socket and serializes wire I/O, so every public call is cancellation-safe. Pool, statement cache, and tracing spans are first-class — not bolted on later.

Connect, type, query

Three values: a Config, a Command, and a Query. Codecs come in by name so the compiler can read your intent.

use babar::codec::{int4, text};
use babar::query::Query;
use babar::{Config, Session};

#[tokio::main(flavor = "current_thread")]
async fn main() -> babar::Result<()> {
    let session: Session = Session::connect(           // type: Session
        Config::new("localhost", 5432, "postgres", "postgres")
            .password("secret")
            .application_name("hello-babar"),
    )
    .await?;

    let select: Query<(), (i32, String)> =             // type: Query<(), (i32, String)>
        Query::raw(
            "SELECT 1::int4 AS id, 'Ada'::text AS name",
            (),
            (int4, text),
        );

    let rows: Vec<(i32, String)> = session.query(&select, ()).await?; // type: Vec<(i32, String)>
    println!("{rows:?}");

    session.close().await?;
    Ok(())
}

You wrote three things: a Config describing where to connect, a Query<A, B> describing the round-trip (parameters in, rows out), and the call that ties them together. The codec tuple (int4, text) is the schema of the rows you’ll get back.

Where to go next

New here? Read What makes babar babar → first — a one-page tour of where babar sits and what makes it distinctive.

  • Prerequisites → — one docker run for a Postgres that logs every byte back at you.
  • Your first query → — the same flow, walked one line at a time, with that Postgres handy.
  • The Book of Babar → — thirteen short chapters covering connecting, querying, transactions, pooling, COPY, migrations, errors, codecs, web services, TLS, and observability.
  • Reference → — codec catalog, error catalog, feature flags, configuration knobs.
  • Why babar → — the design notes.