burner-redis

Experimental: This library is under active development and not yet ready for production use. APIs may change without notice.

An embedded, in-process Redis-compatible database written in Rust with Python bindings. Drop-in replacement for redis.asyncio.Redis that runs inside the host process with no external server needed.

Built to back docket and self-hosted Prefect servers without requiring a separate Redis deployment.

Installation

pip install burner-redis

Requires Python 3.10+. Pre-built wheels available for Linux (x86_64, aarch64), macOS (x86_64, arm64), and Windows (x86_64, arm64).

Quick start

from burner_redis import BurnerRedis

db = BurnerRedis()

# Use like redis.asyncio.Redis
await db.set("key", "value")
value = await db.get("key")

# Persistence across restarts
db = BurnerRedis(persistence_path="data.dat")
await db.set("key", "value")
# Data is saved on process exit and reloaded on next start

Supported commands

Strings

SET (with NX/EX/PX), GET, MGET, DELETE, EXISTS, KEYS, TTL, EXPIRE

Hashes

HSET, HGET, HDEL, HGETALL, HVALS, HEXISTS, HINCRBY

Sets

SADD, SMEMBERS, SISMEMBER, SREM

Sorted sets

ZADD, ZREM, ZRANGE (with WITHSCORES), ZRANGEBYSCORE (with WITHSCORES/LIMIT), ZRANGESTORE, ZREMRANGEBYSCORE, ZCARD, ZSCORE, ZCOUNT

Streams

XADD, XREAD, XLEN, XRANGE, XDEL, XTRIM, XGROUP CREATE, XGROUP DESTROY, XREADGROUP, XACK, XAUTOCLAIM, XCLAIM, XINFO GROUPS, XINFO CONSUMERS, XPENDING, XPENDING RANGE

Pub/Sub

PUBLISH, SUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE, PSUBSCRIBE, PUNSUBSCRIBE, PUBSUB CHANNELS, PUBSUB NUMSUB, PUBSUB NUMPAT

Scripting

EVAL, EVALSHA, SCRIPT LOAD, SCRIPT EXISTS

Python-layer features

• Pipeline — buffer commands and execute in batch, matching redis.asyncio.Redis.pipeline() semantics
• Lock — distributed-style locking with atomic Lua-based release, matching redis.asyncio.Redis.lock() semantics
• PubSub — async message listener with channel and pattern subscriptions
• Script — register and call Lua scripts, matching redis.asyncio.Redis.register_script()

Persistence

Pass persistence_path to save state to disk on shutdown and restore on startup:

db = BurnerRedis(persistence_path="burner-redis.dat")

• Crash-safe writes (atomic temp file + rename)
• Expired keys excluded from snapshots
• Manual save available via await db.save() or await db.save(path="custom.dat")
• MessagePack binary format

redis-py compatibility

burner-redis implements a subset of the redis.asyncio.Redis interface — enough to back docket and common Prefect server workflows, but not the full redis-py API. Commands not yet implemented will raise NotImplementedError.

When the redis package is installed, exceptions subclass redis.exceptions.ResponseError and redis.exceptions.NoScriptError so existing error handling works unchanged.

Development

# Prerequisites: Rust 1.85+, Python 3.10+, uv

# Development build
uv run maturin develop

# Run tests
uv run pytest

# Run Rust tests
cargo test

Packaging notes

Wheel builds use a vendored Lua 5.4 by default so pip install burner-redis does not require a system Lua.

Packaging systems that already provide Lua can opt out of vendoring and link against that copy instead:

maturin build --release --no-default-features

If auto-detection is not available, point Cargo at the packaged Lua library explicitly:

LUA_LIB_NAME=lua
LUA_LIB=/path/to/lib

License

MIT