DBF

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DBF is a small, fast Ruby library for reading dBase, xBase, Clipper, and FoxPro database files.

Compatibility

DBF is tested to work with the following versions of Ruby:

  • Ruby 3.3.x, 3.4.x, 4.0.x

Older Rubies are supported by older DBF release lines:

DBF version Ruby support
5.2+ 3.3+
4.3 – 5.1 3.1+
4.0 – 4.2 2.4+
3.x (3_stable) 2.0 – 2.3
2.x (2_stable) 1.8 – 1.9

DBF is Ractor-friendly: all library constants are deeply frozen, so tables can be opened, enumerated, and exported inside non-main Ractors.

Installation

Install the gem manually:

gem install dbf

Or add to your Gemfile:

gem 'dbf'

Basic Usage

Open a DBF file using a path:

require 'dbf'
widgets = DBF::Table.new("widgets.dbf")

Open a DBF file using an IO object:

data = File.open('widgets.dbf', 'rb')
widgets = DBF::Table.new(data)

All errors raised by the library inherit from DBF::Error, so you can rescue the library as a unit:

begin
  widgets = DBF::Table.new("widgets.dbf")
rescue DBF::Error => e
  puts "Unable to read DBF file: #{e.message}"
end

Open a DBF by passing in raw data (wrap the raw data with StringIO):

widgets = DBF::Table.new(StringIO.new('raw binary data'))

Use the block form to close the table automatically, like File.open:

DBF::Table.open('widgets.dbf') do |table|
  table.each { |record| puts record.name }
end

Enumerate all records

widgets.each do |record|
  puts record.name
  puts record.email
end

Find a single record

widget = widgets.find(6)

Note that find() will return nil if the requested record has been deleted and not yet pruned from the database.

The value for an attribute can be accessed via element reference in several ways.

widget.slot_number     # underscored field name as method

widget["SlotNumber"]   # original field name in dbf file
widget['slot_number']  # underscored field name string
widget[:slot_number]   # underscored field name symbol

Get a hash of all attributes. The keys are the original column names.

widget.attributes
# => {"Name" => "Thing1 | SlotNumber" => 1}

Search for records using a simple hash format. Multiple search criteria are ANDed. Use the block form if the resulting record set is too big. Otherwise, all records are loaded into memory.

# find all records with slot_number equal to s42
widgets.find(:all, slot_number: 's42') do |widget|
  # the record will be nil if deleted, but not yet pruned from the database
  if widget
    puts widget.serial_number
  end
end

# find the first record with slot_number equal to s42
widgets.find :first, slot_number: 's42'

# find record number 10
widgets.find(10)

Enumeration

DBF::Table is a Ruby Enumerable, so you get several traversal, search, and sort methods for free. For example, let's get only records created before January 1st, 2015:

widgets.select { |w| w.created_date < Date.new(2015, 1, 1) }

Or custom sorting:

widgets.sort_by { |w| w.created_date }

Encodings (Code Pages)

dBase supports encoding non-english characters with different character sets. Unfortunately, the character set used may not be set explicitly. In that case, you will have to specify it manually. For example, if you know the dbf file is encoded with 'Russian OEM':

table = DBF::Table.new('dbf/books.dbf', nil, 'cp866')
Code Page Encoding Description
01 cp437 U.S. MS–DOS
02 cp850 International MS–DOS
03 cp1252 Windows ANSI
04 macRoman Standard Macintosh
08 cp865 Danish OEM
09 cp437 Dutch OEM
0a cp850 Dutch OEM*
0b cp437 Finnish OEM
0d cp437 French OEM
0e cp850 French OEM*
0f cp437 German OEM
10 cp850 German OEM*
11 cp437 Italian OEM
12 cp850 Italian OEM*
13 cp932 Japanese Shift-JIS
14 cp850 Spanish OEM*
15 cp437 Swedish OEM
16 cp850 Swedish OEM*
17 cp865 Norwegian OEM
18 cp437 Spanish OEM
19 cp437 English OEM (Britain)
1a cp850 English OEM (Britain)*
1b cp437 English OEM (U.S.)
1c cp863 French OEM (Canada)
1d cp850 French OEM*
1f cp852 Czech OEM
22 cp852 Hungarian OEM
23 cp852 Polish OEM
24 cp860 Portuguese OEM
25 cp850 Portuguese OEM*
26 cp866 Russian OEM
37 cp850 English OEM (U.S.)*
40 cp852 Romanian OEM
4d cp936 Chinese GBK (PRC)
4e cp949 Korean (ANSI/OEM)
4f cp950 Chinese Big5 (Taiwan)
50 cp874 Thai (ANSI/OEM)
57 cp1252 ANSI
58 cp1252 Western European ANSI
59 cp1252 Spanish ANSI
64 cp852 Eastern European MS–DOS
65 cp866 Russian MS–DOS
66 cp865 Nordic MS–DOS
67 cp861 Icelandic MS–DOS
68 cp895 Kamenický (Czech) MS–DOS
69 cp620 Mazovia (Polish) MS–DOS
6a cp737 Greek MS–DOS (437G)
6b cp857 Turkish MS–DOS
6c cp863 French–Canadian MS–DOS
78 cp950 Taiwan Big 5
79 cp949 Hangul (Wansung)
7a cp936 PRC GBK
7b cp932 Japanese Shift-JIS
7c cp874 Thai Windows/MS–DOS
7d cp1255 Hebrew Windows
7e cp1256 Arabic Windows
86 cp737 Greek OEM
87 cp852 Slovenian OEM
88 cp857 Turkish OEM
96 macCyrillic Russian Macintosh
97 macCentEuro Macintosh EE
98 macGreek Greek Macintosh
c8 cp1250 Eastern European Windows
c9 cp1251 Russian Windows
ca cp1254 Turkish Windows
cb cp1253 Greek Windows
cc cp1257 Baltic Windows

Migrating to ActiveRecord

An example of migrating a DBF book table to ActiveRecord using a migration:

require 'dbf'

class Book < ActiveRecord::Base; end

class CreateBooks < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    table = DBF::Table.new('db/dbf/books.dbf')
    eval(table.schema)

    Book.reset_column_information
    table.each do |record|
      Book.create(title: record.title, author: record.author)
    end
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :books
  end
end

If you have initialized the DBF::Table with raw data, you will need to set the exported table name manually:

table.name = 'my_table_name'

Migrating to Sequel

An example of migrating a DBF book table to Sequel using a migration:

require 'dbf'

class Book < Sequel::Model; end

Sequel.migration do
  up do
    table = DBF::Table.new('db/dbf/books.dbf')
    eval(table.schema(:sequel, table_only: true)) # limit output to create_table() only

    Book.reset_column_information
    table.each do |record|
      Book.create(title: record.title, author: record.author)
    end
  end

  down do
    drop_table(:books)
  end
end

If you have initialized the DBF::Table with raw data, you will need to set the exported table name manually:

table.name = 'my_table_name'

Command-line utility

A small command-line utility called dbf is installed with the gem.

$ dbf -h
usage: dbf [-h|-s|-a|-c|-r|-j|-J] filename
  -h = print this message
  -v = print the DBF gem version
  -s = print summary information
  -a = create an ActiveRecord::Schema
  -r = create a Sequel migration
  -c = export as CSV
  -j = export as a JSON array
  -J = export as JSON Lines (one record per line)

Create an executable ActiveRecord schema:

dbf -a books.dbf > books_schema.rb

Create an executable Sequel schema:

dbf -r books.dbf > migrate/001_create_books.rb

Dump all records to a CSV file:

dbf -c books.dbf > books.csv

Dump all records as JSON or JSON Lines:

dbf -j books.dbf > books.json
dbf -J books.dbf > books.jsonl

JSON Lines output is streamed record by record, so it works well for very large files and pipelines (for example dbf -J books.dbf | jq or importing into DuckDB).

Reading a Visual Foxpro database (v8, v9)

A special Database::Foxpro class is available to read Visual Foxpro container files (file with .dbc extension). When using this class, long field names are supported, and tables can be referenced without using names.

require 'dbf'

contacts = DBF::Database::Foxpro.new('contact_database.dbc').contacts
my_contact = contacts.record(1).spouses_interests

dBase version compatibility

The basic dBase data types are generally supported well. Support for the advanced data types in dBase V and FoxPro are still experimental or not supported. If you have insight into how any of the unsupported data types are implemented, please open an issue on Github. FoxBase/dBase II files are not supported at this time.

Supported data types by dBase version

Version Description C N L D M F B G P Y T I V X @ O +
02 FoxBase Y Y Y Y - - - - - - - - - - - - -
03 dBase III without memo file Y Y Y Y - - - - - - - - - - - - -
04 dBase IV without memo file Y Y Y Y - - - - - - - - - - - - -
05 dBase V without memo file Y Y Y Y - - - - - - - - - - - - -
07 Visual Objects 1.x Y Y Y Y - - - - - - - - - - - - -
30 Visual FoxPro Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y N Y Y Y N N N N -
31 Visual FoxPro with AutoIncrement Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y N Y Y Y N N N N N
32 Visual FoxPro with field type Varchar or Varbinary Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y N Y Y Y N N N N N
7b dBase IV with memo file Y Y Y Y Y Y - - - - - - - - - - -
83 dBase III with memo file Y Y Y Y Y - - - - - - - - - - - -
87 Visual Objects 1.x with memo file Y Y Y Y Y - - - - - - - - - - - -
8b dBase IV with memo file Y Y Y Y Y - - - - - - - - N - - -
8e dBase IV with SQL table Y Y Y Y Y - - - - - - - - N - - -
f5 FoxPro with memo file Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y N Y Y Y N N N N N
fb FoxPro without memo file Y Y Y Y - Y Y Y N Y Y Y N N N N N

Data type descriptions

  • C = Character
  • N = Number
  • L = Logical
  • D = Date
  • M = Memo
  • F = Float
  • B = Binary
  • G = General
  • P = Picture
  • Y = Currency
  • T = DateTime
  • I = Integer
  • V = VariField
  • X = SQL compat
  • @ = Timestamp
  • O = Double

    • Autoincrement

Limitations

  • DBF is read-only
  • Index files are not utilized

License

Copyright (c) 2006-2026 Keith Morrison <keithm@infused.org>

Released under the MIT License. See LICENSE for the full text.