Redi/S

Redi/S is a Redis server implementation in the Swift programming language. Based on Apple’s SwiftNIO framework.

What is Redis? Checkout the home page, but it is an easy to use and very popular Key-Value Store, w/ PubSub functionality.

It is not meant to replace the C based Redis server, but the goal is to make it feature complete and well performing.

Use cases:

• Testing of server apps (pull up a Redi/S within your Xcode just for testing).
• As an “embedded” database. Redi/S comes as a regular Swift package you can directly embed into your own server or application.
• Easy to extend in a safy language.

Supported Commands

Redi/S supports a lot, including PubSub and monitoring.
Redi/S supports a lot not, including transactions or HyperLogLogs.

There is a list of supported commands.

Contributions welcome!! A lot of the missing stuff is really easy to add!

Performance

Performance differs, e.g. lists are implemented using arrays (hence RPUSH is okayish, LPUSH is very slow). But looking at just the simple GET/SET, it is surprisingly close to the highly optimized C implementation:

Redi/S (2 NIO threads on MacPro 3,7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5):

helge@ZeaPro ~ $ redis-benchmark -p 1337 -t SET,GET,RPUSH,INCR -n 500000 -q
SET: 48003.07 requests per second
GET: 48459.00 requests per second
INCR: 43890.45 requests per second
RPUSH: 46087.20 requests per second

Redis 4.0.8 (same MacPro 3,7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5):

helge@ZeaPro ~ $ redis-benchmark -t SET,GET,RPUSH,INCR -n 500000 -q
SET: 54884.74 requests per second
GET: 54442.51 requests per second
INCR: 54692.62 requests per second
RPUSH: 54013.18 requests per second

Redi/S on RaspberryPi 3B+

$ redis-benchmark -h zpi3b.local -p 1337 -t SET,GET,RPUSH,INCR -n 50000 -q
SET: 4119.29 requests per second
GET: 5056.12 requests per second
INCR: 3882.59 requests per second
RPUSH: 3872.07 requests per second

There are Performance notes, looking at the specific NIO implementation of Redi/S.

Persistence is really inefficient, the databases are just dumped as JSON via Codable. Easy to fix.

How to run

$ swift build -c release
$ .build/release/redi-s
2383:M 11 Apr 17:04:16.296 # sSZSsSZSsSZSs Redi/S is starting sSZSsSZSsSZSs
2383:M 11 Apr 17:04:16.302 # Redi/S bits=64, pid=2383, just started
2383:M 11 Apr 17:04:16.303 # Configuration loaded
 ____          _ _    ______
 |  _ \ ___  __| (_)  / / ___|    Redi/S 64 bit
 | |_) / _ \/ _` | | / /\___ \
 |  _ <  __/ (_| | |/ /  ___) |   Port: 1337
 |_| \_\___|\__,_|_/_/  |____/    PID: 2383

2383:M 11 Apr 17:04:16.304 # Server initialized
2383:M 11 Apr 17:04:16.305 * Ready to accept connections

Status

There are a few inefficiencies, the worst being the persistent storage. Yet generally this seems to work fine.

The implementation has grown a bit and could use a little refactoring, specially the database dump parts.

Playing with the Server

You’d like to play with this, but never used Redis before? OK, a small tutorial on what you can do with it.

First make sure the server runs in one shell:

$ swift build -c release
$ .build/release/redi-s
83904:M 12 Apr 16:33:15.159 # sSZSsSZSsSZSs Redi/S is starting sSZSsSZSsSZSs
83904:M 12 Apr 16:33:15.169 # Redi/S bits=64, pid=83904, just started
83904:M 12 Apr 16:33:15.170 # Configuration loaded
 ____          _ _    ______
 |  _ \ ___  __| (_)  / / ___|    Redi/S 64 bit
 | |_) / _ \/ _` | | / /\___ \
 |  _ <  __/ (_| | |/ /  ___) |   Port: 1337
 |_| \_\___|\__,_|_/_/  |____/    PID: 83904

83904:M 12 Apr 16:33:15.176 # Server initialized
83904:M 12 Apr 16:33:15.178 * Ready to accept connections

Notice how the server says: “Port 1337”. This is the port the server is running on.

Via telnet/netcat

You can directly connect to the server and issue Redis commands (the server is then running the connection in telnet mode, which is different to the regular RESP protocol):

$ nc localhost 1337
KEYS *
*0
SET theanswer 42
+OK
GET theanswer
$2
42

Redis is a key/value store. That is, it acts like a big Dictionary that can be modified from multiple processes. Above we list the available KEYS, then we set the key theanswer to the value 42, and retrieve it. (Redis provides great documentation on the available commands, Redi/S implements many, but not all of them).

Via redis-cli

Redis provides a tool called redis-cli, which is a much more convenient way to access the server. On macOS you can install that using brew install redis (which also gives you the real server), on Ubuntu you can grab it via sudo apt-get install redis-tools.

The same thing we did in telnet above:

$ redis-cli -p 1337
127.0.0.1:1337> KEYS *
1) "theanswer"
127.0.0.1:1337> SET theanswer 42
OK
127.0.0.1:1337> GET theanswer
"42"

Key Expiration

Redis is particularily useful for HTTP session stores, and for caches. When setting a key, you can set an “expiration” (in seconds, milliseconds, or Unix timestamps):

127.0.0.1:1337> EXPIRE theanswer 10
(integer) 1
127.0.0.1:1337> TTL theanswer
(integer) 6
127.0.0.1:1337> GET theanswer
"42"
127.0.0.1:1337> TTL theanswer
(integer) -2
127.0.0.1:1337> GET theanswer
(nil)

We are using “strings” here. In Redis “strings” are actually “Data” objects, i.e. binary arrays of bytes (this is even true for bytes!). For example in a web application, you could use the “session-id” you generate, serialize your session into a Data object, and then store it like SET session-id <session> TTL 600.

Key Generation

But how do we generate keys (e.g. session-ids) in a distributed setting? As usual there are many ways to do this. For example you could use a Redis integer key which provides atomic increment and decrement operations:

127.0.0.1:1337> SET idsequence 0
OK
127.0.0.1:1337> INCR idsequence
(integer) 1
127.0.0.1:1337> INCR idsequence
(integer) 2

Or if you generate keys on the client side, you can validate that they are unique using SETNX. For example:

127.0.0.1:1337> SETNX mykey 10
(integer) 1

And another client will get

127.0.0.1:1337> SETNX mykey 10
(integer) 0

Simple Lists

Redis cannot only store string (read: Data) values, it can also store lists, sets and hashes (dictionaries). As well as some other datatypes: Data Types Intro.

127.0.0.1:1337> RPUSH chatchannel "Hi guys!"
(integer) 1
127.0.0.1:1337> RPUSH chatchannel "How is it going?"
(integer) 2
127.0.0.1:1337> LLEN chatchannel
(integer) 2
127.0.0.1:1337> LRANGE chatchannel 0 -1
1) "Hi guys!"
2) "How is it going?"
127.0.0.1:1337> RPOP chatchannel
"How is it going?"
127.0.0.1:1337> RPOP chatchannel
"Hi guys!"
127.0.0.1:1337> RPOP chatchannel
(nil)

Monitoring

Assume you want to debug what’s going on on your Redis server. You can do this by connecting w/ a fresh client and put that into “monitoring” mode. The Redis server will echo all commands it receives to that monitor:

$ redis-cli -p 1337
127.0.0.1:1337> MONITOR
OK

Some other client:

127.0.0.1:1337> hmset user:1000 username antirez birthyear 1976 verified 1
OK
127.0.0.1:1337> hmget user:1000 username verified
1) "antirez"
2) "1"

The monitor will print:

1523545069.071390 [0 127.0.0.1:60904] "hmset" "user:1000" "username" "antirez" "birthyear" "1976" "verified" "1"
1523545087.016070 [0 127.0.0.1:60904] "hmget" "user:1000" "username" "verified"

Publish/Subscribe

Redis includes a simple publish/subscribe server. Any numbers of clients can subscribe to any numbers of channels. Other clients can then push “messages” to a channel, and all subscribed clients will receive them.

One client:

127.0.0.1:1337> PSUBSCRIBE thermostats*
Reading messages... (press Ctrl-C to quit)
1) psubscribe
2) "thermostats*"
3) (integer) 1

Another client (the reply contains the number of consumers):

127.0.0.1:1337> PUBLISH thermostats:kitchen "temperature set to 42℃"
(integer) 1

The subscribed client will get:

1) message
2) "thermostats:kitchen"
3) "temperatur set to 4242℃"

Note: PubSub is separate to the key-value store. You cannot watch keys using that! (there are blocking list operations for producer/consumer scenarios, but those are not yet supported by Redi/S)

Benchmarking

Redis tools also include a tool called redis-benchmark which can be, similar to apache-bench or wrk be used to measure the server performance.

For example, to exercise the server with half a million SET, GET, RPUSH and INCR requests each:

$ redis-benchmark -p 1337 -t SET,GET,RPUSH,INCR -n 500000 -q
SET: 43192.81 requests per second
GET: 46253.47 requests per second
INCR: 38952.95 requests per second
RPUSH: 39305.09 requests per second

Who

Brought to you by ZeeZide. We like feedback, GitHub stars, cool contract work, presumably any form of praise you can think of.

There is a #swift-nio channel on the swift-server Slack.