memtui

A modern, intuitive TUI (Terminal User Interface) client for Memcached, built with Go.

• Why memtui?
• Highlights
• Installation
• Quick Start
• Use Cases
• Keyboard Shortcuts
• Features
• Configuration
• Built With
• Contributing
• Support
• License

Ever tried to debug Memcached data? Traditional tools like telnet or nc make it painful to browse keys, understand data formats, or safely edit values.

memtui brings the developer experience you expect from modern tools:

• Browse all keys in a tree — Uses lru_crawler metadump to enumerate keys (requires Memcached 1.4.31+)
• Auto-detect data formats — Recognizes JSON, gzip/zlib, and binary data automatically
• Edit with conflict detection — CAS support detects concurrent modifications during edits

• Hierarchical Key Navigation — Browse keys organized in a tree structure with folder-like grouping
• Smart Value Viewer — Auto-detect and format JSON, with syntax highlighting
• VS Code-style Command Palette — Quick access to all commands with Ctrl+P
• Real-time Key Filtering — Fuzzy search through thousands of keys instantly
• Safe Operations — Confirmation dialogs for destructive operations
• Vim-style Keybindings — Navigate with j/k, familiar to terminal users

brew install nnnkkk7/tap/memtui

go install github.com/nnnkkk7/memtui/cmd/memtui@latest

git clone https://github.com/nnnkkk7/memtui.git
cd memtui
go build -o memtui ./cmd/memtui

1. Start Memcached:

# Using Docker
docker run -d -p 11211:11211 memcached:latest

2. Run memtui:

memtui                        # Connect to localhost:11211 (default)
memtui -addr localhost:11211  # Specify address
memtui --help                 # Show help

• Debugging — Quickly inspect cached values during development
• Data Migration — View and verify data before/after migrations
• Cache Analysis — Understand key naming patterns and data distribution
• Incident Response — Rapidly inspect cache state during outages

Keys are automatically organized into a hierarchical tree based on common delimiters (:, /, .). For example:

user:1001:profile  ─┐
user:1001:session  ─┼→  user/
user:1002:profile  ─┘     ├── 1001/
cache:api:users    ─┐     │     ├── profile
cache:api:posts    ─┘     │     └── session
                          ├── 1002/
                          │     └── profile
                          cache/
                            └── api/
                                  ├── users
                                  └── posts

The viewer automatically detects and formats:

• JSON — Pretty-printed with syntax highlighting
• Compressed data — Detects gzip/zlib (displayed as hex in auto mode)
• Binary data — Displays hex dump
• Plain text — Shows as-is

Press Ctrl+P to open the VS Code-style command palette for quick access to all features with fuzzy search.

Configuration file location: ~/.config/memtui/config.yaml

# Connection settings
connection:
  default_address: localhost:11211  # Default server address

# UI settings
ui:
  theme: dark           # dark or light
  key_delimiter: ":"    # Key hierarchy delimiter (e.g., ":", "/", ".")

CLI flags override config file settings:

memtui -addr localhost:11212  # Overrides connection.default_address

• Bubble Tea — TUI framework based on The Elm Architecture
• Bubbles — Common Bubble Tea components
• Lip Gloss — Style definitions for terminal apps
• gomemcache — Memcached client for Go

Contributions are welcome! Here's how you can help:

If you find memtui useful, please consider giving it a star on GitHub! It helps others discover the project and motivates continued development.

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.