DBF is a small fast library for reading dBase, xBase, Clipper and FoxPro database files. It is written completely in Ruby and has no external dependencies.

Changes in version 1.0.5:

• Strip non-ascii characters from column names

DBF is a small fast library for reading dBase, xBase, Clipper and FoxPro database files. It is written completely in Ruby and has no external dependencies.

Changes in version 1.0.2:

• Fixes a bug when reading Visual Foxpro memo files.

A lot of work has gone into this release of the DBF gem. The basic reader code is stable now. I’m in the process of moving the test suite from Test::Unit to Rspec. When I’m done with that I’ll add a couple of additional features, polish the documentation and christen it 1.0.0.

• New find method
• Full compatibility with the two flavors of memo file
• Two modes of operation:
  • In memory (default): All records are loaded into memory on the first
    request. Records are retrieved from memory for all subsequent requests.
  • File I/O: All records are retrieved from disk on every request
• Improved documentation and more usage examples

I’ve written a DBF database access library in Ruby, but so far I’ve only tested it with files created with a couple of versions of FoxPro. I need files created with different flavors of DBase, XBase, Clipper, and FoxPro in order to flesh out the test suite. Ultimately, I would like to library to handle all the known variations of the DBF file format.

The project will be available on rubyforge.com within in a couple of days. I’ll post the link as soon as it’s available. The project is hosted on Rubyforge and can be found here.

If you have any files with the following characteristics, please email them to me at keithm@infused.org. Better yet, if you want to take the time to create a fresh sample database for me that would be awesome. Here’s what I’m looking for:

• Small dataset. Prefer less than 100 rows
• At least one field from each of the general data types. This means:
  • At least one Character field (if using software that supports fields larger than 254 characters, also include at least one field that is larger)
  • At least one Number field
  • At least one Boolean field
  • At least one Date field
  • At least one Memo field (please include the memo file along with the dbf file)
• Fields to include if supported by the software:
  • At least one Floating Point field
  • At least one Binary, General, or Picture field (not neccessary to have one of each)
  • At least one Currency field
  • At least one Integer field
  • At lease one DateTime field
  • At lease one Timestamp field

There are a few other data types such as VariField which I don’t really care about right now.

Special Bonus Offer:
If you have access to 3 or more of the software packages and/or versions and are willing to create good sample databases I will pay you for your efforts. Contact me at the email above for details.