How ioredis Became the Leading Node.js Redis Client and Got Acquired

ioredis is a high‑performance, feature‑rich Redis client for Node.js, created by Chinese developer luin.

It works by performing a single socket write and batching commands through a pipeline, which makes it more efficient than many other clients.

Example

const Redis = require('ioredis');
const redis = new Redis();

async function main() {
    const pipeline = redis.pipeline();
    pipeline.set('foo', 'bar');
    pipeline.get('foo');
    pipeline.set('count', 1);
    pipeline.incr('count');
    pipeline.get('count');
    pipeline.del('foo');

    const results = await pipeline.exec();
    console.log(results);
}
(async () => {
    await main();
})();

Its enterprise users now include large internet companies such as Alibaba.

The author recently announced that the client has been officially acquired by Redis.

The project has been moved from its own website to GitHub:

https://github.com/redis/ioredis

Two years ago ioredis overtook the “redis” client to become the most popular Redis client in the Node.js ecosystem.

At that time the author lamented the many difficulties of the original redis client.

2014 年底的时候我开始使用 Node.js 开发后端程序。
为了连接 Redis ，所以研究了下市面上的 Redis 客户端库。
当时最流行的库 redis 是由 Uber 的首席架构师 Matt Ranney 开发的。
使用后发现这个库有一些让自己不满意的地方：
不支持 Promise （当时 Promise 还是个非常新的概念）
1 命令语法不太美观（个人审美差异😄）
2 功能不齐全：缺少 Cluster 、Sentinel 等 Redis 新功能的支持。
由于当时正好有点闲暇时间，就自己从零开发并开源了 ioredis 。
到现在已经维护 7 年了。
在这 7 年里，另一个库 redis 经历了多次更换。
主要维护者、计划和 ioredis 合并、最终被 Redis 官方收购的过程。
两者相对比还是挺有趣的。

The author says ioredis was built from scratch out of frustration with existing libraries, and after nine years it has become a model project that was eventually acquired by the official Redis organization.