milvus-lite (Node.js)

Node.js/TypeScript wrapper for milvus-lite — an embedded vector database.

The pre-built milvus binary is bundled in platform-specific npm packages. npm install automatically picks the right one for your platform — no runtime downloads needed.

Install

npm install @lyyyuna/milvus-lite @zilliz/milvus2-sdk-node

Usage

import { start } from "@lyyyuna/milvus-lite";
import { MilvusClient, DataType } from "@zilliz/milvus2-sdk-node";

const server = await start("./milvus.db");

const client = new MilvusClient({ address: server.addr });

await client.createCollection({
  collection_name: "demo",
  fields: [
    { name: "id", data_type: DataType.Int64, is_primary_key: true, autoID: true },
    { name: "vector", data_type: DataType.FloatVector, dim: 128 },
  ],
});

await server.stop();

How it works

@lyyyuna/milvus-lite                     ← main package (pure JS)
├── optionalDependencies:
│   ├── @lyyyuna/milvus-lite-darwin-arm64    ← macOS Apple Silicon binary
│   ├── @lyyyuna/milvus-lite-darwin-x64      ← macOS Intel binary
│   ├── @lyyyuna/milvus-lite-linux-x64       ← Linux amd64 binary
│   └── @lyyyuna/milvus-lite-linux-arm64     ← Linux arm64 binary

npm automatically installs only the package matching your platform. At runtime, start() requires the platform package to get the binary path, then spawns it as a subprocess.

API

start(dbFile, options?)

Starts a milvus-lite server.

• dbFile — Path to the local database file (e.g., "./milvus.db")
• options.address — gRPC address (default: random port on localhost)
• options.logLevel — "INFO" or "ERROR" (default: "ERROR")

Returns { addr: string, stop: () => Promise<void> }

Supported platforms

| OS | Arch | npm package | |----|------|-------------| | macOS | arm64 (Apple Silicon) | @lyyyuna/milvus-lite-darwin-arm64 | | macOS | amd64 (Intel) | @lyyyuna/milvus-lite-darwin-x64 | | Linux | amd64 | @lyyyuna/milvus-lite-linux-x64 | | Linux | arm64 | @lyyyuna/milvus-lite-linux-arm64 |

API compatibility

All milvus-lite supported APIs work with the official Node.js SDK:

• Collection: Create, Drop, Has, List, GetStatistics
• Index: Create (FLAT, IVF_FLAT), Describe, Drop
• Data: Insert, Upsert, Delete
• Search: Search (with filters), Query
• Load: Load, Release, GetLoadState

Known issues

describeCollection may throw — The Node.js SDK v2.6+ reformats the response in a way that's incompatible with milvus-lite's minimal response. Use listCollections for collection discovery.

Unsupported features (same as milvus-lite limitations):

• Partitions
• RBAC (users/roles)
• Aliases

License

Apache 2.0