Install webdis with Homebrew, apt, Nix

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository

Commands and aliases

• webdis

Project history

Nicolas Favre-Felix created the public Webdis repository in December 2010. A Redis mailing-list announcement the same month described it as a week-old server produced after an IRC discussion about HTTP interfaces to Redis and invited feedback from the Redis community.

The project emerged during Redis's early growth, when developers were experimenting with ways to expose Redis to web applications and scripting environments. Salvatore Sanfilippo replied on the mailing list that there was likely a need for the software in Redis web-related use cases, while also raising access-control concerns that became important for any HTTP-to-database bridge.

Adoption history

Webdis remained a niche but durable bridge rather than becoming part of Redis itself. Its public repository had nearly 3,000 stars by July 2026 and continued to receive updates, while the package appeared in Debian, Ubuntu, Nix, and Homebrew, which is a strong signal for a small infrastructure tool.

The tool's adoption is clearest where HTTP is the integration point: browser demos, lightweight dashboards, constrained clients, Pub/Sub streaming over chunked transfer, and systems that prefer a reverse-proxy-friendly HTTP surface over direct Redis TCP access.

How it is used

The documented usage pattern is path-based command forwarding: a URL shaped like `/COMMAND/arg0/arg1/...` is executed against Redis, with the response serialized in the selected output format. The project also documents Pub/Sub delivery to HTTP clients using chunked transfer encoding.

In practice, Webdis is useful as a controlled adapter in front of Redis, not as a blanket public database endpoint. Its package-nerd role is to make Redis scriptable from curl, browser JavaScript, or HTTP-only environments while keeping deployment to a small C server and a JSON configuration file.

Why package nerds care

Webdis is a classic Unix-era adapter package: it does not try to replace Redis or a web framework; it translates one protocol shape into another. That makes it memorable to package users who like small daemons that can be composed with curl, reverse proxies, service managers, and existing databases.

Timeline

• 2010-12: The GitHub repository was created.
• 2010-12: The author announced Webdis to the Redis mailing list as a week-old HTTP interface to Redis.
• 2011: Public discussion framed Webdis around the usefulness and risks of exposing Redis through HTTP.
• 2026: The repository remained active and package-manager metadata listed Webdis across several Unix-like ecosystems.

Related projects

• Related projects include Redis itself, hiredis, nginx Redis modules such as ngx_redis2, REST-ish database gateways, and small HTTP adapter daemons used to expose non-HTTP services to web clients.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/nicolasff/webdis
• https://github.com/nicolasff/webdis
• https://groups.google.com/g/redis-db/c/p7yKbMyc_m0
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2136267
• https://webd.is/