readstat

Rust library for parsing SAS binary files (.sas7bdat) into Apache Arrow RecordBatch format. Parsing is performed via FFI bindings to the ReadStat C library; the resulting data is exposed through a safe, idiomatic Rust API.

Note: The ReadStat C library supports SAS, SPSS, and Stata file formats. The readstat-sys crate exposes the full ReadStat API — all 125 functions across all formats. However, this crate currently only implements parsing and conversion for SAS .sas7bdat files. SPSS and Stata formats are not supported.

Minimum Supported Rust Version (MSRV): 1.88 (Rust edition 2024).

Quick Start

Read an entire file into a single Arrow RecordBatch:

fn main() -> Result<(), readstat::ReadStatError> {
    let batch = readstat::read_to_batch("data.sas7bdat")?;
    println!("{} rows x {} columns", batch.num_rows(), batch.num_columns());
    Ok(())
}

Or read just the file/variable metadata, without loading any rows:

fn main() -> Result<(), readstat::ReadStatError> {
    let md = readstat::read_metadata("data.sas7bdat")?;
    println!("{} rows x {} columns", md.row_count, md.var_count);
    Ok(())
}

For streaming large files in chunks, parallel reads, and column filtering, use the ReadStatPath / ReadStatMetadata / ReadStatData types directly — see the crate documentation.

Features

Output format writers are feature-gated (all enabled by default):

• csv — CSV output via arrow-csv
• parquet — Parquet output (Snappy, Zstd, Brotli, Gzip, Lz4 compression)
• feather — Arrow IPC / Feather format
• ndjson — Newline-delimited JSON
• sql — DataFusion SQL query support (optional, not enabled by default)

Key Types

• ReadStatData — Coordinates FFI parsing, accumulates values directly into typed Arrow builders
• ReadStatMetadata — File-level metadata (row/var counts, encoding, compression, schema)
• ReadStatWriter — Writes Arrow batches to the requested output format
• ReadStatPath — Validated input file path
• WriteConfig — Output configuration (path, format, compression)

For the full architecture overview, see docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.