Installation

ferriorm has two parts: a CLI that parses your schema and generates code, and a runtime library that ships with your application.

1. Install the CLI

cargo install ferriorm-cli

This gives you the ferriorm command. Verify it works:

ferriorm --version

2. Add runtime dependencies

Add the ferriorm runtime to your project. Pick the feature flag for your database:

# PostgreSQL
cargo add ferriorm-runtime --features postgres

# SQLite
cargo add ferriorm-runtime --features sqlite

# Both
cargo add ferriorm-runtime --features postgres,sqlite

3. Add required companion crates

ferriorm’s generated code depends on a few standard crates. Add them to your project.

Important: sqlx must be a direct dependency in your Cargo.toml. The generated code uses #[derive(sqlx::FromRow)], which is a proc macro that expands to code referencing ::sqlx:: absolute paths internally. Transitive dependencies (through ferriorm-runtime) are not sufficient for absolute path resolution in Rust.

cargo add sqlx --features runtime-tokio,tls-rustls,postgres,chrono,uuid
cargo add tokio --features full
cargo add serde --features derive
cargo add serde_json
cargo add chrono --features serde
cargo add uuid --features v4,serde

For SQLite, replace postgres with sqlite in the sqlx features.

Complete Cargo.toml example

Here is a full Cargo.toml for a PostgreSQL project:

[package]
name = "my-app"
version = "0.1.0"
edition = "2024"

[dependencies]
ferriorm-runtime = { version = "0.1", features = ["postgres"] }
sqlx = { version = "0.8", features = ["runtime-tokio", "tls-rustls", "postgres", "chrono", "uuid"] }
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }
serde = { version = "1", features = ["derive"] }
serde_json = "1"
chrono = { version = "0.4", features = ["serde"] }
uuid = { version = "1", features = ["v4", "serde"] }

And for SQLite:

[package]
name = "my-app"
version = "0.1.0"
edition = "2024"

[dependencies]
ferriorm-runtime = { version = "0.1", features = ["sqlite"] }
sqlx = { version = "0.8", features = ["runtime-tokio", "tls-rustls", "sqlite", "chrono", "uuid"] }
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }
serde = { version = "1", features = ["derive"] }
serde_json = "1"
chrono = { version = "0.4", features = ["serde"] }
uuid = { version = "1", features = ["v4", "serde"] }

Next steps

With everything installed, head to the Quick Start guide to create your first ferriorm project.