redis-web

redis-web is a Rust HTTP/WebSocket gateway for Redis, designed for teams that want an explicit, inspectable protocol boundary with compatibility support for older webdis behavior and hiredis-based clients.

Quick start

Run the canonical binary against a JSON config:

cargo run -p redis-web --bin redis-web -- redis-web.json

webdis compatibility is still available as a temporary alias:

cargo run -p redis-web --bin webdis -- webdis.json

Generate a baseline config file for local development:

cargo run -p redis-web -- --write-default-config --config ./redis-web.generated.json

You can start with a minimal command and test responses over HTTP:

curl http://127.0.0.1:7379/SET/hello/world
curl http://127.0.0.1:7379/GET/hello

What you get from redis-web

redis-web exposes Redis command execution as URL-driven HTTP endpoints and WebSocket streams, while keeping format selection explicit:

• JSON (.json) for general clients and structured tool consumption.
• MessagePack (.msg) for compact binary responses.
• Raw RESP (.raw) for lower-level integrations.
• Optional JSONP support and MIME passthrough behavior for compatibility flows.

It also supports:

• WebSocket command transport through both JSON arrays and raw RESP frames.
• Redis DB selection in the request path.
• Command-level ACL enforcement and optional HTTP basic auth.
• TLS connection options for Redis backends and configurable timeouts/pooling settings.
• Config-comparison performance benchmarking through redis-web-bench.
• Process controls you usually need in service environments: daemonization, privilege dropping, and structured tracing.

Compatibility is a first-class design goal:

• Legacy webdis naming, aliases, and config keys are supported.
• hiredis clients (including redis-py flows that use hiredis-py) can be supported through a staged C ABI compatibility layer (libhiredis-style symbols and headers).

Workspace layout and crate responsibilities

This is a Rust workspace with five crates:

• redis-web-core: shared types and behavior that all other crates depend on.
  • Configuration loading and validation (config + schema compatibility helpers).
  • Request parsing, output format negotiation, ACL primitives, and response rendering.
• redis-web-runtime: the actual server runtime layer.
  • Axum routes, HTTP handlers, command execution bridge, WebSocket handlers, and Redis pool management.
  • Re-exported router/server functions let you embed the same runtime behavior into other Axum apps.
• redis-web-compat: compatibility helpers for migration.
  • Canonical vs legacy invocation/config naming.
  • Friendly deprecation behavior and alias handling during transition.
• redis-web-hiredis-compat: C ABI compatibility crate (cdylib/staticlib).
  • Builds libhiredis-compatible symbols and headers for relinking C clients.
  • Used when you need drop-in behavior for existing hiredis integration paths.
• redis-web: application entrypoint crate.
  • CLI parsing (--write-default-config, legacy/canonical entrypoint behavior).
  • Logging setup, daemonization, privilege dropping, and startup orchestration.
• redis-web-bench: informational benchmark runner for comparing config variants.
  • Loads a base config plus named override variants from YAML/JSON.
  • Boots isolated redis-web processes, runs benchmark suites, and writes JSON/Markdown artifacts.

Subprojects

• subprojects/redispy-hiredis-compat: an integration harness and script collection for exercising redis-py / hiredis compatibility end-to-end.
  • Builds and stages compat artifacts.
  • Provides verification scripts and test orchestration for regression workflows.

Where to continue reading

• Getting started and install/run flow: docs/src/content/docs/getting-started/overview.md, docs/src/content/docs/getting-started/run-and-first-requests.md
• API and protocol details: docs/src/content/docs/reference/api.md, docs/src/content/docs/reference/configuration.md, docs/src/content/docs/reference/cli.md
• Compatibility references: docs/src/content/docs/compatibility/webdis-compatibility.md, docs/src/content/docs/compatibility/hiredis-dropin.md, docs/src/content/docs/compatibility/hiredis-client-integration.md, subprojects/redispy-hiredis-compat/USAGE.md
• Embedding and deploy docs: docs/src/content/docs/guides/embedding.md, docs/src/content/docs/guides/deployment.md
• Maintainer architecture: docs/src/content/docs/maintainers/architecture.md, redis-web.schema.json
• Useful build/test entrypoints from repo conventions: make test, make test_all, make clean, scripts/compose-smoke.sh
• Config benchmark comparison entrypoint: make bench_config_compare SPEC=docs/examples/config/redis-web.bench.yaml