Redis Tool

A lightweight, high-performance CLI utility for reading, writing, deleting, and listing keys in Redis using namespaces. Built with Bun's native Redis client.

This tool is designed to be dual-purpose:

1. Console App: Provides clean, human-readable output in your terminal.
2. Subprocess: Outputs exact raw strings (without extra newlines or formatting) when spawned by another application, making it perfectly suited for inter-process communication.

Prerequisites

• Bun installed on your machine.
• A running Redis server.

Configuration

By default, Bun's Redis client will attempt to connect to redis://localhost:6379. You can override this by setting the REDIS_URL environment variable:

export REDIS_URL="redis://username:password@your-redis-host:6379"

Usage

The tool accepts up to five positional arguments depending on the action: [action] [namespace] [key] [value] [ttl_in_seconds]

(Notes: The key is optional for list. The value is required for write. The ttl_in_seconds is optional for write.)

Running directly with Bun

Write a persistent value:

bun run index.ts write myapp session_id "xyz_12345"

Write a value that expires (e.g., 3600 seconds / 1 hour):

bun run index.ts write myapp temp_session "abc_987" 3600

Read a value:

bun run index.ts read myapp session_id

Delete a value:

bun run index.ts delete myapp session_id

List all keys in a namespace:

bun run index.ts list myapp

Building a Standalone Executable

You can compile this script into a single, standalone binary. This means you won't need to prefix your commands with bun run.

bun build --compile --outfile redis-tool index.ts

Making it Globally Available (macOS / Linux)

If you want to run redis-tool from any directory on your machine without needing the ./ prefix, you can move the compiled binary to your /usr/local/bin folder:

sudo mv redis-tool /usr/local/bin/

Using the compiled binary: Once compiled (and optionally moved to your bin folder), you can use it like this:

redis-tool write myapp test "hello world"
redis-tool write myapp exp_test "hello" 60
redis-tool read myapp test
redis-tool delete myapp test
redis-tool list myapp

Using as a Subprocess

Because redis-tool automatically detects when it is not running in a TTY terminal, it strips conversational formatting and trailing newlines from output operations. This makes it incredibly easy to consume the stdout stream from another script.

Example: Reading a single value

async function readValue() {
  const readProc = Bun.spawn(["redis-tool", "read", "myapp", "test"]);
  const output = await new Response(readProc.stdout).text();
  console.log("Read from subprocess:", output); 
}

Example: Parsing a list of keys When you use the list command as a subprocess, it outputs the keys separated by standard newlines (\n). You can easily parse this into an array:

async function listKeys() {
  const listProc = Bun.spawn(["redis-tool", "list", "myapp"]);
  const output = await new Response(listProc.stdout).text();
  
  // Split the raw string into a clean array of keys
  const keysArray = output.split("\n").filter(Boolean); 
  console.log("Keys found:", keysArray);
}

How it Works (Namespaces)

When you provide a namespace and a key, the tool automatically joins them with a colon (:). For example, running redis-tool write cache user_1 "Alice" will execute SET cache:user_1 "Alice" under the hood. If you provide a TTL of 60, it will follow up with an EXPIRE cache:user_1 60 command. Similarly, redis-tool list cache executes a KEYS cache:* pattern match to find all relevant records.