FEMEBE (Front-End, Middle-End, Back-End) is a library for introspection and manipulation of the [PostgreSQL wire protocol] (http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/protocol.html), colloquially known as FEBE (Front-End/Back-End).

The library is in development and breaking changes to its API will still happen.

FEMEBE works with all currently-supported Postgres versions.

The Postgres protocol abstracts the low-level TCP communication between a client and server into a bidrectional stream of sequential, synchronous messages.

FEMEBE provides an interface to that abstraction, so any Go tool that needs to hook into the protocol can build against a normal package API rather than having to parse the raw protocol at the TCP level.

There are five basic ways to use FEMEBE:

• Stub out or implement a Postgres client (the former is probably more sensibly done by actually being a client--e.g., using pq--but this may be useful for more esoteric use cases).
• Stub out or implement (!) a Postges-compatible server
• Postgres switchboard (route connections and then step out of the way)
• Listen to the protocol (e.g., a protocol traffic viewer)
• Manipulate the protocol (e.g., dynamically enrich query results with data from other sources)

FEMEBE can use help in a number of areas:

• Bug reports, especially with minimal, reproducible test cases
• Performance benchmarks and improvements
• API improvements so we can confidently freeze the interface, especially for:
  • Composable (but still performant and simple) Routers
  • Custom error types rather than blind propagation
• Add server TLS support (TLS for the client piece exists)
• Support parsing and formatting remaining message types
• Utility functions for data type management
• Documentation (especially sample code)
• Other ideas

To contribute, please open an issue.