About RefWire
Understanding the core mission and technology behind RefWire, a lightweight, high-performance reference data service.
What is RefWire?
RefWire is a lightweight, high-performance reference data service designed to efficiently manage and serve mostly static datasets—such as countries, currencies, languages, or product categories. It instantly transforms a JSON array of objects into ready-to-use APIs. RefWire excels at providing rapid lookups and searches by leveraging intelligent in-memory caching and efficient indexing.
Complementing the core service, the RefWire ecosystem includes the RefWireCLI for comprehensive command-line management, RefStor for accessing ready-to-use standardized datasets (RefPack), and RefWire Explor for easy API interaction and testing.
Why RefWire?
Modern applications often rely on consistent and reliable reference data—datasets like country codes, currencies, time zones, or product taxonomies that change infrequently but are used widely across systems. Traditional databases or bloated data services are often overkill for managing such static, read-heavy data.
RefWire was built specifically for this gap:
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Smart Caching & Indexing
For lightning-fast responses to common lookups and filtered queries.
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Minimal Configuration
Just point it at a JSON array, and you instantly get a full-featured API.
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Designed for Performance
Built on .NET 9 Minimal APIs with efficient memory use.
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Secure Out-of-the-Box
With optional API key enforcement and per-client rate limiting.
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Pluggable Architecture
Swap out storage backends (Azure, Local FS, etc.) or orchestration logic as needed.
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Easily Embeddable
Use as a microservice in your stack or run it standalone for internal tooling.
If you’ve ever found yourself serving static JSON files from an S3 bucket or maintaining a CRUD app just to handle lookup tables—RefWire is for you.
Explore RefWire Further
Dive deeper into the project, contribute, or get started with your own RefWire instance.