C++ SDK Reference

The Milvus C++ SDK is the official C++ client for Milvus and Zilliz Cloud. It provides a native C++ API for managing collections, vectors, indexes, and database operations, with a fluent request-builder style.

Features

Native C++ API — Fluent request-builder pattern with Status return values
Collection and vector management — Create, describe, load, and drop collections; manage schemas and indexes
Data operations — Insert, upsert, delete, query, and search, including hybrid and sparse vector search
Database and user management — RBAC, resource groups, aliases, and database administration
Modern field types — Array, JSON, sparse, binary, float16/bfloat16, int8, and struct fields
Milvus and Zilliz Cloud — Connect to both self-hosted Milvus and Zilliz Cloud instances via URI

Compatibility

The following table shows the recommended milvus-sdk-cpp versions for each Milvus version:

Milvus version	Recommended SDK version
2.3.x	2.3 (branch)
2.4.x	v2.4.1
2.5.x	v2.5.4
2.6.x	v2.6.6
3.0.x	v3.0.2

Installation

See the Development Guide for details on how to compile and install the SDK from source.

Quick Start

cpp
#include <milvus/MilvusClientV2.h>

using namespace milvus;

int main() {
    auto client = MilvusClientV2::Create();
    ConnectParam connect_param{"http://localhost:19530", "root:Milvus"};
    auto status = client->Connect(connect_param);
    if (!status.IsOk()) {
        return 1;
    }

    // Create a simple collection with a primary field and a vector field
    CreateSimpleCollectionRequest req;
    req.WithCollectionName("my_collection")
       .WithPrimaryFieldName("id")
       .WithVectorFieldName("embedding")
       .WithDimension(128);
    status = client->CreateSimpleCollection(req);

    client->Disconnect();
    return 0;
}