HTTP + JSON for Redis: Now You Can Deploy Redweb on DotCloud in Under 30 Seconds

Sometimes, especially if you're building mobile or Javascript apps, you just need a simple data store on the back end instead of a full-blown web app. Redis, which provides a swiss-army knife of standard data structures at lightning speeds (~100k operations per second on a typical linux box), would be ideal for this purpose if it provided a JSON API over HTTP.

And now it does! To make your life easier, we've extended Redweb, the excellent web interface for Redis written by tnm over at BankSimple, so that every API call now returns JSON. We've also packaged it for DotCloud, so that deploying Redweb to Dotcloud is now as easy as:

When the push command has finished running, you'll see a URL that corresponds to your new deployment. If you open that URL in your browser, you'll see the normal Redweb homepage which provides a Redis web interface (the default username and password are admin:admin). In addition, however, you can now run commands like the following:

If you'd like to disable authentication, simply remove the nginx.conf file from the redweb directory and redeploy.

Is this the beginning of a "RedApp" movement? Will developers around the world start to build all of their apps in pure Javascript? Will Rails and Django fade into obscurity? Um... maybe, but definitely not before access control is added. Right now, for example, a malicious user could decompile your mobile app or simply inspect your Javascript to gain admin access to the database. I'll find time to work on access control soon (although if anyone wants to pitch in, the more the merrier). Keep an eye on this blog and the DotCloud twitter feed for updates!