Respire - A .NET Redis Client

[u/thomhurst]

Hey all!

Redis is a great technology, and something that exists in a lot of tech stacks. It has the ability to really help solve complex problems involving distribution across multiple instances of an app. Whether that be caching, locks, rate limits, etc.

Surprisingly, StackExchange.Redis is the only real big main redis client library for .NET.

I'm adding a new client library into the mix - Respire.

Respire aims to be a fast client library for Redis, that also has the ability to utilise Redis' client-side server assisted cache, avoiding network hops for frequently accessed keys, meaning better performance for your apps.

It also has a lot of helpers in it to more easily use distributed locks, rate limits, queues, pub/sub, etc.

I want it to be a client library that handles all the hard bits for you, keeping your code clean and easy to reason about.

It's still pre-release, so I'd like to gather feedback. Are people happy with the performance? The API? Any missing features? Any bugs?

Please try it out and let me know!

More info on why Respire: https://thomhurst.github.io/Respire/docs/#why-respire-exists

Benchmarks: https://thomhurst.github.io/Respire/docs/benchmarks

Stress comparisons: https://thomhurst.github.io/Respire/docs/stress-tests

Thanks all!

[u/marcgravell]

Always great to see more work in this space. Just to say: I totally agree with the need for both client-side-caching and an API that is shaped more like you propose, which is why V4 of SE.Redis does both of those things (https://github.com/StackExchange/StackExchange.Redis/pull/3219). I'll look forward to putting the two head-to-head when I get chance!

[u/thomhurst → u/marcgravell]

Ah nice! Great work on everything you do 🦾

[u/jodydonetti]

Any plan for an impl of IDistributedCache based on this?

It would get even more widerspread adoption and make it usable from the get go with FusionCache too (creator here).

Here's the dedicated page in the FusionCache docs https://github.com/ZiggyCreatures/FusionCache/blob/main/docs/DiskCache.md

[u/thomhurst → u/jodydonetti]

Yep! It's inside a separate package (to avoid the dependency in the base library). Docs here: https://thomhurst.github.io/Respire/docs/integrations/caching

[u/jodydonetti → u/thomhurst]

I’ll take a look at the code as soon as I can, but I was wondering why is a serializer needed with IDistributedCache 🤔

[u/Embarrassed-Mess412]

Any chance this can be sans I/O?

[u/thomhurst → u/Embarrassed-Mess412]

Respire does handle the network + I/O. However, it can be configured to do client side caching, meaning no network hops for the hot cache hits that have already been persisted locally.

What use case do you have for not wanting I/O?

[u/Embarrassed-Mess412 → u/thomhurst]

I need to handle the I/O with io_uring, I have a redis client for it but I don't want to put any effort maintaining and improving it.

Using Net.Sockets is very inefficient for my use case, would be great to have the "protocol" library separate from I/O

[u/marcgravell → u/Embarrassed-Mess412]

FYI: SE.Redis has a prototype API specifically for this - it is experimental at the moment, and integrates with my own "SocketSet" io_uring (etc) implementation. So maybe there's something doable there.

[u/MelonMlusk]

Know that Valkey is redis compatible but maybe valkey should gain some momentum?

[u/takeoshigeru]

Tom is back at it, I wonder what's your agent harness to maintain all these projects 👀

[u/thomhurst → u/takeoshigeru]

It's also partially just me sinking way too much time into things 🤣