This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.

International License.

ISBN 978-0-9997730-7-9
 How To Manage a Redis Database

Mark Drake

DigitalOcean, New York City, New York, USA

2020-07
How To Manage a Redis Database

1. About DigitalOcean
2. Introduction
3. How To Connect to a Redis Database
4. How To Manage Redis Databases and Keys
5. How To Manage Replicas and Clients in Redis
6. How To Manage Strings in Redis
7. How To Manage Lists in Redis
8. How To Manage Hashes in Redis
9. How To Manage Sets in Redis
10. How To Manage Sorted Sets in Redis
11. How To Run Transactions in Redis
12. How To Expire Keys in Redis
13. How To Troubleshoot Issues in Redis
14. How To Change Redis’s Configuration from the Command Line
About DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean is a cloud services platform delivering the simplicity

developers love and businesses trust to run production applications at
scale. It provides highly available, secure and scalable compute, storage
and networking solutions that help developers build great software faster.
Founded in 2012 with offices in New York and Cambridge, MA,
DigitalOcean offers transparent and affordable pricing, an elegant user
interface, and one of the largest libraries of open source resources
available. For more information, please visit
https://www.digitalocean.com or follow @digitalocean on Twitter.
Introduction

About this Book

Redis is an open-source, in-memory key-value data store known for its
flexibility, performance, and broad language support. A NoSQL database,
Redis doesn’t use structured query language (otherwise known as SQL) to
store, manipulate, and retrieve data. Redis instead comes with its own set
of commands for managing and accessing data.
The chapters in this book cover a broad range of Redis commands, but
they generally focus on connecting to a Redis database, managing a
variety of data types, and troubleshooting and debugging problems, along
with a few other more specific functions. You’re encouraged to jump to
whichever chapter is relevant to the task you’re trying to complete.

Motivation for this Book

Every available Redis command is covered and thoroughly explained in
the official Redis command documentation, as well as in numerous other
resources in print and online. However, many resources tend to silo each
command off from one another with little tying them together.
This book aims to provide an approachable introduction to Redis
concepts by outlining many of the key-value store’s commands so readers
can learn their patterns and syntax, thus building up readers’
understanding gradually. This book covers topics ranging from connecting
to a Redis data store, to managing a variety of Redis data types,
troubleshooting errors, and more.
Learning Goals and Outcomes
The goal for this book is to serve as an introduction to Redis for those
interested in getting started with it, or key-value stores in general. For
more experienced users, this book can function as a collection of helpful
cheat sheets and in-depth reference. Each chapter is self-contained and can
be followed independently of the others. By reading through and following
along with each chapter, you’ll become acquainted with many of Redis’s
most widely used commands, which will help you as you begin to build
applications that take advantage of its power and speed.

How To Use this Book

The chapters of this book are written as cheat sheets with self-contained
examples. We encourage you to jump to whichever chapter is relevant to
the task you’re trying to complete.
The commands shown in this book were tested on an Ubuntu 18.04
server running Redis version 4.0.9. To set up a similar environment, you
can follow Step 1 of our guide on How To Install and Secure Redis on
Ubuntu 18.04. We will demonstrate how these commands behave by
running them with redis-cli, the Redis command line interface. Note
that if you’re using a different Redis interface — Redli, for example —
the exact output of certain commands may differ.
Alternatively, you could provision a managed Redis database instance to
explore Redis’s functionality. However, depending on the level of control
allowed by your database provider, some commands in this guide may not
work as described. To use this book with a DigitalOcean Managed
Database, follow our Managed Databases product documentation. Then,
you must either install Redli or set up a TLS tunnel in order to connect to
the Managed Database over TLS.
How To Connect to a Redis Database

Written by Mark Drake

Redis is an open-source, in-memory key-value data store. Whether
you’ve installed Redis locally or you’re working with a remote instance,
you need to connect to it in order to perform most operations. In this
tutorial we will go over how to connect to Redis from the command line,
how to authenticate and test your connection, as well as how to close a
Redis connection.

Connecting to Redis
If you have redis-server installed locally, you can connect to the
Redis instance with the redis-cli command:
redis-cli
This will take you into redis-cli’s interactive mode which presents
you with a read-eval-print loop (REPL) where you can run Redis’s built-in
commands and receive replies.
In interactive mode, your command line prompt will change to reflect
your connection. In this example and others throughout this guide, the
prompt indicates a connection to a Redis instance hosted locally
(127.0.0.1) and accessed over Redis’s default port (6379):
The alternative to running Redis commands in interactive mode is to
run them as arguments to the redis-cli command, like so:
redis-cli redis_command
 If you want to connect to a remote Redis datastore, you can specify its
host and port numbers with the -h and -p flags, respectively. Also, if
you’ve configured your Redis database to require a password, you can
include the -a flag followed by your password in order to authenticate:
redis-cli -h host -p port_number -a password
If you’ve set a Redis password, clients will be able to connect to Redis
even if they don’t include the -a flag in their redis-cli command.
However, they won’t be able to add, change, or query data until they
authenticate. To authenticate after connecting, use the auth command
followed by the password:
auth password
If the password passed to auth is valid, the command will return OK.
Otherwise, it will return an error.
If you’re working with a managed Redis database, your cloud provider
may give you a URI that begins with redis:// or rediss:// which
you can use to access your datastore. If the connection string begins with
redis://, you can include it as an argument to redis-cli to connect.
However, if you have a connection string that begins with rediss://,
that means your managed database requires connections over TLS/SSL.
redis-cli does not support TLS connections, so you’ll need to use a
different tool that supports the rediss protocol in order to connect with
the URI. For DigitalOcean Managed Databases, which require connections
to be made over TLS, we recommend using Redli to access the Redis
instance.
Use the following syntax to connect to a database with Redli. Note that
this example includes the --tls option, which specifies that the
connection should be made over TLS, and the -u flag, which declares that
the following argument will be a connection URI:
redli --tls -u rediss://connection_URI
If you’ve attempted to connect to an unavailable instance, redis-cli
will go into disconnected mode. The prompt will reflect this:
Redis will attempt to reestablish the connection every time you run a
command when it’s in a disconnected state.

Testing Connections
The ping command is useful for testing whether the connection to a
database is alive. Note that this is a Redis-specific command and is
different from the ping networking utility. However, the two share a
similar function in that they’re both used to check a connection between
two machines.
If the connection is up and no arguments are included, the ping
command will return PONG:
ping

Output

PONG

If you provide an argument to the ping command, it will return that

argument instead of PONG if the connection is successful:
ping "hello Redis!"
 Output

"hello Redis!"

If you run ping or any other command in disconnected mode, you will
see an output like this:
ping

Output

Could not connect to Redis at host:port:

Connection refused

Note that ping is also used by Redis internally to measure latency.

Disconnecting from Redis

To disconnect from a Redis instance, use the quit command:
quit
Running exit will also exit the connection:
exit
Both quit and exit will close the connection, but only as soon as all
pending replies have been written to clients.

Conclusion
This guide details a number of commands used to establish, test, and close
connections to a Redis server. If there are other related commands,
arguments, or procedures you’d like to see in this guide, please ask or
make suggestions in the comments below.
 For more information on Redis commands, see our tutorial series on
How to Manage a Redis Database.
How To Manage Redis Databases and
Keys

Written by Mark Drake

Redis is an open-source, in-memory key-value data store. A key-value
data store is a type of NoSQL database in which keys serve as unique
identifiers for their associated values. Any given Redis instance includes a
number of databases, each of which can hold many different keys of a
variety of data types. In this tutorial, we will go over how to select a
database, move keys between databases, and manage and delete keys.

Managing Databases
Out of the box, a Redis instance supports 16 logical databases. These
databases are effectively siloed off from one another, and when you run a
command in one database it doesn’t affect any of the data stored in other
databases in your Redis instance.
Redis databases are numbered from 0 to 15 and, by default, you
connect to database 0 when you connect to your Redis instance. However,
you can change the database you’re using with the select command
after you connect:
select 15
If you’ve selected a database other than 0, it will be reflected in the
redis-cli prompt:
To swap all the data held in one database with the data held in another,
use the swapdb command. The following example will swap the data held
in database 6 with that in database 8, and any clients connected to either
database will be able to see changes immediately:
swapdb 6 8
swapdb will return OK if the swap is successful.
If you want to move a key to a different Redis instance, you can run
migrate. This command ensures the key exists on the target instance
before deleting it from the source instance. When you run migrate, the
command must include the following elements in this order:

The hostname or IP address of the destination database

The target database’s port number
The name of the key you want to migrate
The database number where you want to store the key on the
destination instance
A timeout, in milliseconds, which defines the maximum amount of
idle communication time between the two machines. Note that this
isn’t a time limit for the operation, just that the operation should
always make some level of progress within the defined length of time

To illustrate:
migrate 203.0.113.0 6379 key_1 7 8000
Additionally, migrate allows the following options which you can add
after the timeout argument:

COPY: Specifies that the key should not be deleted from the source
instance
REPLACE: Specifies that if the key already exists on the destination,
the migrate operation should delete and replace it
 KEYS: Instead of providing a specific key to migrate, you can enter
an empty string ("") and then use the syntax from the keys
command to migrate any key that matches a pattern. For more
information on how keys works, see our tutorial on How To
Troubleshoot Issues in Redis.

Managing Keys
There are a number of Redis commands that are useful for managing keys
regardless of what type of data they hold. We’ll go over a few of these in
this section.
rename will rename the specified key. If it’s successful, it will return
OK:
rename old_key new_key
You can use randomkey to return a random key from the currently
selected database:
randomkey

Output

"any_key"

Use type to determine what type of data the given key holds. This
command’s output can be either string, list, hash, set, zset, or
stream:
type key_1
 Output

"string"

If the specified key doesn’t exist, type will return none instead.
You can move an individual key to another database in your Redis
instance with the move command. move takes the name of a key and the
database where you want to move the key as arguments. For example, to
move the key key_1 to database 8, you would run the following:
move key_1 8
move will return OK if moving the key was successful.

Deleting Keys
To delete one or more keys of any data type, use the del command
followed by one or more keys that you want to delete:
del key_1 key_2
If this command deletes the key(s) successfully it will return
(integer) 1. Otherwise, it will return (integer) 0.
The unlink command performs a similar function as del, with the
difference being that del blocks the client as the server reclaims the
memory taken up by the key. If the key being deleted is associated with a
small object, the amount of time it takes for del to reclaim the memory is
very small and the blocking time may not even be noticeable.
However, it can become inconvenient if, for example, the key you’re
deleting is associated with many objects, such as a hash with thousands or
millions of fields. Deleting such a key can take a noticeably long time, and
you’ll be blocked from performing any other operations until it’s fully
removed from the server’s memory.
unlink, however, first determines the cost of deallocating the memory
taken up by the key. If it’s small then unlink functions the same way as
del by the key immediately while also blocking the client. However, if
there’s a high cost to deallocate memory for a key, unlink will delete the
key asynchronously by creating another thread and incrementally reclaim
memory in the background without blocking the client:
unlink key_1
Since it runs in the background, it’s generally recommended that you
use unlink to remove keys from your server to reduce errors on your
clients, though del will also suffice in many cases.
Warning: The following two commands are considered dangerous. The
flushdb and flushall commands will irreversibly delete all the keys
in a single database and all the keys in every database on the Redis server,
respectively. We recommend that you only run these commands if you are
absolutely certain that you want to delete all the keys in your database or
server.
It may be in your interest to rename these commands to something with
a lower likelihood of being run accidentally.
To delete all the keys in the selected database, use the flushdb
command:
flushdb
To delete all the keys in every database on a Redis server (including the
currently selected database), run flushall:
flushall
 Both flushdb and flushall accept the async option, which allows
you to delete all the keys on a single database or every database in the
cluster asynchronously. This allows them to function similarly to the
unlink command, and they will create a new thread to incrementally
free up memory in the background.

Backing Up Your Database

To create a backup of the currently selected database, you can use the
save command:
save
This will export a snapshot of the current dataset as an .rdb file, which
is a database dump file that holds the data in an internal, compressed
serialization format.
save runs synchronously and will block any other clients connected to
the database. Hence, the save command documentation recommends that
this command should almost never be run in a production environment.
Instead, it suggests using the bgsave command. This tells Redis to fork
the database: the parent will continue to serve clients while the child
process saves the database before exiting:
bgsave
Note that if clients add or modify data while the bgsave operation is
occurring, these changes won’t be captured in the snapshot.
You can also edit the Redis configuration file to have Redis save a
snapshot automatically (known as snapshotting or RDB mode) after a
certain amount of time if a minimum number of changes were made to the
database. This is known as a save point. The following save point settings
are enabled by default in the redis.conf file:

/etc/redis/redis.conf

. . .
save 900 1
save 300 10
save 60 10000
. . .
dbfilename "nextfile.rdb"
. . .

With these settings, Redis will export a snapshot of the database to the
file defined by the dbfilename parameter every 900 seconds if at least
1 key is changed, every 300 seconds if at least 10 keys are changed, and
every 60 seconds if at least 10000 keys are changed.
You can use the shutdown command to back up your Redis data and
then close your connection. This command will block every client
connected to the database and then perform a save operation if at least
one save point is configured, meaning that it will export the database in its
current state to an .rdb file while preventing clients from making any
changes.
Additionally, the shutdown command will flush changes to Redis’s
append-only file before quitting if append-only mode is enabled. The
append-only file mode (AOF) involves creating a log of every write
operation on the server in a file ending in .aof after every snapshot. AOF
and RDB modes can be enabled on the same server, and using both
persistence methods is an effective way to back up your data.
In short, the shutdown command is essentially a blocking save
command that also flushes all recent changes to the append-only file and
closes the connection to the Redis instance:
Warning: The shutdown command is considered dangerous. By
blocking your Redis server’s clients, you can make your data unavailable
to users and applications that depend on it. We recommend that you only
run this command if you are testing out Redis’s behavior or you are
absolutely certain that you want to block all your Redis server’s clients.
In fact, it may be in your interest to rename this command to something
with a lower likelihood of being run accidentally.
shutdown
If you’ve not configured any save points but still want Redis to perform
a save operation, append the save option to the `shutdown command:
shutdown save
If you have configured at least one save point but you want to shut down
the Redis server without performing a save, you can add the nosave
argument to the command:
shutdown nosave
Note that the append-only file can grow to be very long over time, but
you can configure Redis to rewrite the file based on certain variables by
editing the redis.conf file. You can also instruct Redis to rewrite the
append-only file by running the bgrewriteaof command:
bgrewriteaof
 bgrewriteaof will create the shortest set of commands needed to
bring the database back to its current state. As this command’s name
implies, it will run in the background. However, if another persistence
command is running in a background process already, that command must
finish before Redis will execute bgrewriteaof.

Conclusion
This guide details a number of commands used to manage databases and
keys. If there are other related commands, arguments, or procedures you’d
like to see in this guide, please ask or make suggestions in the comments
below.
For more information on Redis commands, see our tutorial series on
How to Manage a Redis Database.
How To Manage Replicas and Clients in
Redis

Written by Mark Drake

Redis is an open-source, in-memory key-value data store. One of its
most sought-after features is its support for replication: any Redis server
can replicate its data to any number of replicas, allowing for high read
scalability and strong data redundancy. Additionally, Redis was designed
to allow many clients (up to 10000, by default) to connect and interact
with data, making it a good choice for cases where many users need access
to the same dataset.
This tutorial goes over the commands used to manage Redis clients and
replicas.
Note: The Redis project uses the terms “master” and “slave” in its
documentation and in various commands to identify different roles in
replication, though the project’s contributors are taking steps to change
this language in cases where it doesn’t cause compatibility issues.
DigitalOcean generally prefers to use the alternative terms “primary” and
“replica”.
This guide will default to “primary” and “replica” whenever possible,
but note that there are a few instances where the terms “master” and
“slave” unavoidably come up.

Managing Replicas
One of Redis’s most distinguishing features is its built-in replication.
When using replication, Redis creates exact copies of the primary
instance. These secondary instances reconnect to the primary any time
their connections break and will always aim to remain an exact copy of the
primary.
If you’re not sure whether the Redis instance you’re currently connected
to is a primary instance or a replica, you can check by running the role
command:
role
This command will return either master or slave, or potentially
sentinel if you’re using Redis Sentinel.
To designate a Redis instance as a replica of another instance on the fly,
run the replicaof command. This command takes the intended primary
server’s hostname or IP address and port as arguments:
replicaof hostname_or_IP port
If the server was already a replica of another primary, it will stop
replicating the old server and immediately start synchronizing with the
new one. It will also discard the old dataset.
To promote a replica back to being a primary, run the following
replicaof command:
replicaof no one
This will stop the instance from replicating the primary server, but will
not discard the dataset it has already replicated. This syntax is useful in
cases where the original primary fails. After running replicaof no
one on a replica of the failed primary, the former replica can be used as
the new primary and have its own replicas as a failsafe.
 Note: Prior to version 5.0.0, Redis instead included a version of this
command named slaveof.

Managing Clients
A client is any machine or software that connects to a server in order to
access a service. Redis comes with several commands that help with
tracking and managing client connections.
The client list command returns a set of human-readable
information about current client connections:
client list

Output

"id=18165 addr=[2001:db8:0:0::12]:47460 fd=7

name=jerry age=72756 idle=0 flags=N db=0 sub=0
psub=0 multi=-1 qbuf=0 qbuf-free=0 obl=0 oll=0
omem=0 events=r cmd=ping
id=18166 addr=[2001:db8:0:1::12]:47466 fd=8 name=
age=72755 idle=5 flags=N db=0 sub=0 psub=0
multi=-1 qbuf=0 qbuf-free=0 obl=0 oll=0 omem=0
events=r cmd=info
id=19381 addr=[2001:db8:0:2::12]:54910 fd=9 name=
age=9 idle=0 flags=N db=0 sub=0 psub=0 multi=-1
qbuf=26 qbuf-free=32742 obl=0 oll=0 omem=0
events=r cmd=client
"
Here is what each of these fields mean:

id: a unique 64-bit client ID

name: the name of the client connection, as defined by a prior
client setname command
addr: the address and port from which the client is connecting
fd: the file descriptor that corresponds to the socket over which the
client is connecting
age: the total duration of the client connection, in seconds
flags: a set of one or more single-character flags that provide more
granular detail about the clients; see the client list command
documentation for more details
db: the current database ID number that the client is connected to
(can be from 0 to 15)
sub: the number of channels the client is subscribed to
psub: the number of the client’s pattern-matching subscriptions
mutli: the number of commands the client has queued in a
transaction (will show -1 if the client hasn’t begun a transaction or 0
if it has only started a transaction and not queued any commands)
qbuf: the client’s query buffer length, with 0 meaning it has no
pending queries
qbuf-free: the amount of free space in the client’s query buffer,
with 0 meaning that the query buffer is full
obl: the client’s output buffer length
oll: the length of the client’s output list, where replies are queued
when its buffer is full
omem: the memory used by the client’s output buffer
 events: the client’s file descriptor events, these can be r for
“readable”, w for “writable,” or both
cmd: the last command run by the client

Setting client names is useful for debugging connection leaks in

whatever application is using Redis. Every new connection starts without
an assigned name, but client setname can be used to create one for
the current client connection. There’s no limit to how long client names
can be, although Redis usually limits string lengths to 512 MB. Note,
though, that client names cannot include spaces:
client setname elaine
To retrieve the name of a client connection, use the client getname
command:
client getname

Output

"elaine"

To retrieve a client’s connection ID, use the client id command:

client id

Output

(integer) "19492"

Redis client IDs are never repeated and are monotonically incremental.
This means that if one client has an ID greater than another, then it was
established at a later time.
Blocking Clients and Closing Client Connections
Replication systems are typically described as being either synchronous or
asynchronous. In synchronous replication, whenever a client adds or
changes data it must receive some kind of acknowledgement from a
certain number of replicas for the change to register as having been
committed. This helps to prevent nodes from having data conflicts but it
comes at a cost of latency, since the client must wait to perform another
operation until it has heard back from a certain number of replicas.
In asynchronous replication, on the other hand, the client sees a
confirmation that the operation is finished as soon as the data is written to
local storage. There can, however, be a lag between this and when the
replicas actually write the data. If one of the replicas fails before it can
write the change, that write will be lost forever. So while asynchronous
replication allows clients to continue performing operations without the
latency caused by waiting for replicas, it can lead to data conflicts between
nodes and may require extra work on the part of the database administrator
to resolve those conflicts.
Because of its focus on performance and low latency, Redis implements
asynchronous replication by default. However, you can simulate
synchronous replication with the wait command. wait blocks the
current client connection for a specified amount of time (in milliseconds)
until all the previous write commands are successfully transferred and
accepted by a specified number of replicas. This command uses the
following syntax:
wait number_of_replicas number_of_milliseconds
 For example, if you want to block your client connection until all the
previous writes are registered by at least 3 replicas within a 30 millisecond
timeout, your wait syntax would look like this:
wait 3 30
The wait command returns an integer representing the number of
replicas that acknowledged the write commands, even if not every replica
does so:

Output

To unblock a client connection that has been previously blocked,

whether from a wait, brpop, or xread command, you can run a
client unblock command with the following syntax:
client unblock client_id
To temporarily suspend every client currently connected to the Redis
server, you can use the client pause command. This is useful in cases
where you need to make changes to your Redis setup in a controlled way.
For example, if you’re promoting one of your replicas to be the primary
instance, you might pause every client beforehand so you can promote the
replica and have the clients connect to it as the new primary without losing
any write operations in the process.
The client pause command requires you to specify the amount of
time (in milliseconds) you’d like to suspend the clients. The following
example will suspend all clients for one second:
client pause 1000
 The client kill syntax allows you to close a single connection or a
set of specific connections based on a number of different filters. The
syntax looks like this:
client kill filter_1 value_1 ... filter_n value_n
In Redis versions 2.8.12 and later, the following filters are available:

addr: allows you to close a client connection from a specified IP

address and port
client-id: allows you to close a client connection based on its
unique ID field
type: closes every client of a given type, which can be either
normal, master, slave, or pubsub
skipme: the value options for this filter are yes and no:

if no is specified, the client calling the client kill

command will not get skipped, and will be killed if the other
filters apply to it
if yes is specified, the client running the command will be
skipped and the kill command will have no effect on the client.
skipme is always yes by default

Conclusion
This guide details a number of commands used to manage Redis clients
and replicas. If there are other related commands, arguments, or
procedures you’d like to see outlined in this guide, please ask or make
suggestions in the comments below.
 For more information on Redis commands, see our tutorial series on
How to Manage a Redis Database.
How To Manage Strings in Redis

Written by Mark Drake

Redis is an open-source, in-memory key-value data store. In Redis,
strings are the most basic type of value you can create and manage. This
tutorial provides an overview of how to create and retrieve strings, as well
as how to manipulate the values held by string keys.

Creating and Managing Strings

Keys that hold strings can only hold one value; you cannot store more than
one string in a single key. However, strings in Redis are binary-safe,
meaning a Redis string can hold any kind of data, from alphanumeric
characters to JPEG images. The only limit is that strings must be 512 MB
long or less.
To create a string, use the set command. For example, the following
set command creates a key named key_Welcome1 that holds the string
"Howdy":
set key_Welcome1 "Howdy"

Output

OK

To set multiple strings in one command, use mset:

mset key_Welcome2 "there" key_Welcome3 "partners,"
You can also use the append command to create strings:
append key_Welcome4 "welcome to Texas"
If the string was created successfully, append will output an integer
equal to how many characters the string includes:

Output

(integer) 16

Note that append can also be used to change the contents of strings.
See the section on manipulating strings for details on this.

Retrieving Strings
To retrieve a string, use the get command:
get key_Welcome1

Output

"Howdy"

To retrieve multiple strings with one command, use mget:

mget key_Welcome1 key_Welcome2 key_Welcome3
key_Welcome4

Output

1) "Howdy"
2) "there"
3) "partners,"
4) "welcome to Texas"
 For every key passed to mget that doesn’t hold a string value or doesn’t
exist at all, the command will return nil.

Manipulating Strings
If a string is made up of an integer, you can run the incr command to
increase it by one:
set key_1 3
incr key_1

Output

(integer) 4

Similarly, you can use the incrby command to increase a numeric

string’s value by a specific increment:
incrby key_1 16

Output

(integer) 20

The decr and decrby commands work the same way, but they
decrease the integer stored in a numeric string:
decr key_1

Output

(integer) 19
decrby key_1 16

Output

(integer) 3

If an alphabetic string already exists, append will append the value

onto the end of the existing value and return the new length of the string.
To illustrate, the following command appends ", y'all" to the string
held by the key key_Welcome4, so now the string will read "welcome
to Texas, y'all":
append key_Welcome4 ", y'all"

Output

(integer) 15

You can also append integers to a string holding a numeric value. The
following example appends 45 to 3, the integer held in key_1, so it will
then hold 345. In this case, append will also return the new length of the
string, rather than its new value:
append key_1 45

Output

(integer) 3

Because this key still only holds a numeric value, you can perform the
incr and decr operations on it. You can also append alphabetic
characters to an integer string, but if you do this then running incr and
decr on the string will produce an error as the string value is no longer an
integer.

Conclusion
This guide details a number of commands used to create and manage
strings in Redis. If there are other related commands, arguments, or
procedures you’d like to see outlined in this guide, please ask or make
suggestions in the comments below.
For more information on Redis commands, see our tutorial series on
How to Manage a Redis Database.
How To Manage Lists in Redis

Written by Mark Drake

Redis is an open-source, in-memory key-value data store. In Redis, a
list is a collection of strings sorted by insertion order, similar to linked
lists. This tutorial covers how to create and work with elements in Redis
lists.

Creating Lists
A key can only hold one list, although any list can hold over four billion
elements. Redis reads lists from left to right, and you can add new list
elements to the head of a list (the “left” end) with the lpush command or
the tail (the “right” end) with rpush. You can also use lpush or rpush
to create a new list:
lpush key value
Both commands will output an integer showing how many elements are
in the list. To illustrate, run the following commands to create a list
containing the dictum “I think therefore I am”:
lpush key_philosophy1 "therefore"
lpush key_philosophy1 "think"
rpush key_philosophy1 "I"
lpush key_philosophy1 "I"
rpush key_philosophy1 "am"
The output from the last command will read:
 Output

(integer) 5

Note that you can add multiple list elements with a single lpush or
rpush statement:
rpush key_philosophy1 "-" "Rene" "Decartes"
The lpushx and rpushx commands are also used to add elements to
lists, but will only work if the given list already exists. If either command
fails, it will return (integer) 0:
rpushx key_philosophy2 "Happiness" "is" "the"
"highest" "good" "–" "Aristotle"

Output

(integer) 0

To change an existing element in a list, run the lset command

followed by the key name, the index of the element you want to change,
and the new value:
lset key_philosophy1 5 "sayeth"
If you try adding a list element to an existing key that does not contain a
list, it will lead to a clash in data types and return an error. For example,
the following set command creates a key holding a string, so the
following attempt to add a list element to it with lpush will fail:
set key_philosophy3 "What is love?"
lpush key_philosophy3 "Baby don't hurt me"
 Output

(error) WRONGTYPE Operation against a key holding

the wrong kind of value

It isn’t possible to convert Redis keys from one data type to another, so
to turn key_philosophy3 into a list you would need to delete the key
and start over with an lpush or rpush command.

Retrieving Elements from a List

To retrieve a range of items in a list, use the lrange command followed
by a start offset and a stop offset. Each offset is a zero-based index,
meaning that 0 represents the first element in the list, 1 represents the
next, and so on.
The following command will return all the elements from the example
list created in the previous section:
lrange key_philosophy1 0 7

Output

1) "I"
2) "think"
3) "therefore"
4) "I"
5) "am"
6) "sayeth"
7) "Rene"
8) "Decartes"
 The offsets passed to lrange can also be negative numbers. When
used in this case, -1 represents the final element in the list, -2 represents
the second-to-last element in the list, and so on. The following example
returns the last three elements of the list held in key_philosophy1:
lrange key_philosophy1 -3 -1

Output

1) "I"
2) "am"
3) "sayeth"

To retrieve a single element from a list, you can use the lindex
command. However, this command requires you to supply the element’s
index as an argument. As with lrange, the index is zero-based, meaning
that the first element is at index 0, the second is at index 1, and so on:
lindex key_philosophy1 4

Output

"am"

To find out how many elements are in a given list, use the llen
command, which is short for “list length”:
llen key_philosophy1

Output

(integer) 8
 If the value stored at the given key does not exist, llen will return an
error.

Removing Elements from a List

The lrem command removes the first of a defined number of occurrences
that match a given value. To experiment with this, create the following
list:
rpush key_Bond "Never" "Say" "Never" "Again" "You"
"Only" "Live" "Twice" "Live" "and" "Let" "Die"
"Tomorrow" "Never" "Dies"
The following lrem example will remove the first occurence of the
value "Live":
lrem key_Bond 1 "Live"
This command will output the number of elements removed from the
list:

Output

(integer) 1

The number passed to an lrem command can also be negative. The

following example will remove the last two occurences of the value
"Never":
lrem key_Bond -2 "Never"

Output

(integer) 2
 The lpop command removes and returns the first, or “leftmost”
element from a list:
lpop key_Bond

Output

"Never"

Likewise, to remove and return the last or “rightmost” element from a

list, use rpop:
rpop key_Bond

Output

"Dies"

Redis also includes the rpoplpush command, which removes the last
element from a list and pushes it to the beginning of another list:
rpoplpush key_Bond key_AfterToday

Output

"Tomorrow"

If the source and destination keys passed to rpoplpush command are

the same, it will essentially rotate the elements in the list.

Conclusion
This guide details a number of commands that you can use to create and
manage lists in Redis. If there are other related commands, arguments, or
procedures you’d like to see outlined in this guide, please ask or make
suggestions in the comments below.
For more information on Redis commands, see our tutorial series on
How to Manage a Redis Database.
How To Manage Hashes in Redis

Written by Mark Drake

Redis is an open-source, in-memory key-value data store. A Redis hash
is a data type that represents a mapping between a string field and a string
value. Hashes can hold many field-value pairs and are designed to not take
up much space, making them ideal for representing data objects. For
example, a hash might represent a customer, and include fields like name,
address, email, or customer_id.
This tutorial will go over how to manage hashes in Redis, from creating
them to retrieving and deleting the data held within a hash.

Creating Hashes
To create a hash, run the hset command. This command accepts the
name of the hash key, the field string, and corresponding value string as
arguments:
hset poet:Verlaine nationality French
Note: In this example and the following ones, poet:Verlaine is the
hash key. Dots, dashes, and colons are commonly used to make multi-word
keys and fields more readable. It’s helpful to make sure that your keys
follow a consistent and easily readable format.
hset returns (integer) 1 if the field specified is a new field and
the value was set correctly:
 Output

(integer) 1

If, however, you fail to include a value, field, or name for the hash key,
hset will return an error.
Also, note that hset will overwrite the contents of the hash if it already
exists:
hset poet:Verlaine nationality Francais
If the field already exists and its value was updated successfully, hset
will return (integer) 0:

Output

(integer) 0

You can also use hsetnx to add fields to hashes, but it will only work
if the field does not yet exist. If the specified field does already exist, the
hsetnx won’t have any effect and will return (integer) 0:
hsetnx poet:Verlaine nationality French

Output

(integer) 0

To set multiple field/value pairs to a given set, use the hmset

command followed by the corresponding field/value strings:
hmset poet:Verlaine born 1844 died 1896 genre
Decadent
hmset will just return OK if it was successful.
Retrieving Information from Hashes
You can determine if a field exists for a given hash with the hexists
command:
hexists poet:Verlaine nationality
hexists will return (integer) 1 if the field does exist, and
(integer) 0 if it doesn’t.
To return a field’s value, run the hget command followed by the hash
key and the field whose value you want to retrieve:
hget poet:Verlaine nationality

Output

"Francais"

hmget uses the same syntax, but can return the values of multiple
fields
hmget poet:Verlaine born died

Output

1) "1844"
2) "1896"

If the hash you pass to hget or hmget does not exist, both commands
will return (nil):
hmget poet:Dickinson born died
 Output

1) (nil)
2) (nil)

To obtain a list of all the fields held within a certain hash, run the
hkeys command:
hkeys poet:Verlaine

Output

1) "nationality"
2) "born"
3) "died"
4) "genre"

Conversely, run hvals to retrieve a list of values held within a hash:

hvals poet:Verlaine

Output

1) "French"
2) "1844"
3) "1896"
4) "Decadent"

To return a list of every field held by a hash and their associated values,
run hgetall:
hgetall poet:Verlaine
 Output

1) "nationality"
2) "French"
3) "born"
4) "1844"
5) "died"
6) "1896"
7) "genre"
8) "Decadent"

You can find the number of fields in a hash by running hlen, which
stands for “hash length”:
hlen poet:Verlaine

Output

(integer) 4

You can find the length of the value string associated with a field with
hstrlen, which stands for “hash string length”:
hstrlen poet:Verlaine nationality

Output

(integer) 8

hlen will return (integer) 0 if the hash does not exist.

Removing Fields from Hashes

To delete a field from a hash, run the hdel command. hdel can accept
multiple fields as arguments, and will return an integer indicating how
many fields were removed from the hash:
hdel poet:Verlaine born died

Output

(integer) 2

If you pass a field that does not exist to hdel, it will ignore that field
but delete any other existing fields you specify.

Conclusion
This guide details a number of commands used to create and manage
hashes in Redis. If there are other related commands, arguments, or
procedures you’d like to see outlined in this guide, please ask or make
suggestions in the comments below.
For more information on Redis commands, see our tutorial series on
How to Manage a Redis Database.
How To Manage Sets in Redis

Written by Mark Drake

Redis is an open-source, in-memory key-value data store. Sets in Redis
are collections of strings stored at a given key. When held in a set, an
individual record value is referred to as a member. Unlike lists, sets are
unordered and do not allow repeated values.
This tutorial explains how to create sets, retrieve and remove members,
and compare the members of different sets.

Creating Sets
The sadd command allows you to create a set and add one or more
members to it. The following example will create a set at a key named
key_horror with the members "Frankenstein" and "Godzilla":
sadd key_horror "Frankenstein" "Godzilla"
If successful, sadd will return an integer showing how many members
it added to the set:

Output

(integer) 2

If you try adding members of a set to a key that’s already holding a non-
set value, it will return an error. The first command in this block creates a
list named key_action with one element, "Shaft". The next
command tries to add a set member, "Shane", to the list, but this
produces an error because of the clashing data types:
rpush key_action "Shaft"
sadd key_action "Shane"

Output

(error) WRONGTYPE Operation against a key holding

the wrong kind of value

Note that sets don’t allow more than one occurrence of the same
member:
sadd key_comedy "It's" "A" "Mad" "Mad" "Mad" "Mad"
"Mad" "World"

Output

(integer) 4

Even though this saddcommand specifies eight members, it discards

four of the duplicate "Mad" members resulting in a set size of 4.

Retrieving Members from Sets

In this section, we’ll go over a number of Redis commands that return
information about the members held in a set. To practice the commands
outlined here, run the following command, which will create a set with six
members at a key called key_stooges:
sadd key_stooges "Moe" "Larry" "Curly" "Shemp"
"Joe" "Curly Joe"
To return every member from a set, run the smembers command
followed by the key you want to inspect:
smembers key_stooges

Output

1) "Curly"
2) "Moe"
3) "Larry"
4) "Shemp"
5) "Curly Joe"
6) "Joe"

To check if a specific value is a member of a set, use the sismember

command:
sismember key_stooges "Harpo"
If the element "Harpo" is a member of the key_stooges set,
sismember will return 1. Otherwise, it will return 0:

Output

(integer) 0

To see how many members are in a given set (in other words, to find the
cardinality of a given set), run scard:
scard key_stooges
 Output

(integer) 6

To return a random element from a set, run srandmember:

srandmember key_stooges

Output

"Larry"

To return multiple random, distinct elements from a set, you can follow
the srandmember command with the number of elements you want to
retrieve:
srandmember key_stooges 3

Output

1) "Larry"
2) "Moe"
3) "Curly Joe"

If you pass a negative number to srandmember, the command is

allowed to return the same element multiple times:
srandmember key_stooges -3

Output

1) "Shemp"
2) "Curly Joe"
3) "Curly Joe"
 The random element function used in srandmember is not perfectly
random, although its performance improves in larger data sets. See the
command’s official documentation for more details.

Removing Members from Sets

Redis comes with three commands used to remove members from a set:
spop, srem, and smove.
spop randomly selects a specified number of members from a set and
returns them, similar to srandmember, but then deletes them from the
set. It accepts the name of the key containing a set and the number of
members to remove from the set as arguments. If you don’t specify a
number, spop will default to returning and removing a single value.
The following example command will remove and return two randomly-
selected elements from the key_stooges set created in the previous
section:
spop key_stooges 2

Output

1) "Shemp"
2) "Larry"

srem allows you to remove one or more specific members from a set,
rather than random ones:
srem key_stooges "Joe" "Curly Joe"
Instead of returning the members removed from the set, srem returns
an integer showing how many members were removed:
 Output

(integer) 2

Use smove to move a member from one set to another. This command
accepts as arguments the source set, the destination set, and the member to
move, in that order. Note that smove only allows you to move one
member at a time:
smove key_stooges key_jambands "Moe"
If the command moves the member successfully, it will return
(integer) 1:

Output

(integer) 1

If smove fails, it will instead return (integer) 0. Note that if the

destination key does not already exist, smove will create it before moving
the member into it.

Comparing Sets
Redis also provides a number of commands that find the differences and
similarities between sets. To demonstrate how these work, this section will
reference three sets named presidents, kings, and beatles. If
you’d like to try out the commands in this section yourself, create these
sets and populate them using the following sadd commands:
sadd presidents "George" "John" "Thomas" "James"
sadd kings "Edward" "Henry" "John" "James"
"George"
sadd beatles "John" "George" "Paul" "Ringo"
sinter compares different sets and returns the set intersection, or
values that appear in every set:
sinter presidents kings beatles

Output

1) "John"
2) "George"

sinterstore performs a similar function, but instead of returning

the intersecting members it creates a new set at the specified destination
containing these intersecting members. Note that if the destination already
exists, sinterstore will overwrite its contents:
sinterstore new_set presidents kings beatles
smembers new_set

Output

1) "John"
2) "George"

sdiff returns the set difference — members resulting from the

difference of the first specified set from each of the following sets:
sdiff presidents kings beatles

Output

1) "Thomas"
 In other words, sdiff looks at each member in the first given set and
then compares those to members in each successive set. Any member in
the first set that also appears in the following sets is removed, and sdiff
returns the remaining members. Think of it as removing members of
subsequent sets from the first set.
sdiffstore performs a function similar to sdiff, but instead of
returning the set difference it creates a new set at a given destination,
containing the set difference:
sdiffstore new_set beatles kings presidents
smembers new_set

Output

1) "Paul"
2) "Ringo"

Like sinterstore, sdiffstore will overwrite the destination key

if it already exists.
sunion returns the set union, or a set containing every member of
every set you specify:
sunion presidents kings beatles
 Output

1) "Thomas"
2) "George"
3) "Paul"
4) "Henry"
5) "James"
6) "Edward"
7) "John"
8) "Ringo"

sunion treats the results like a new set in that it only allows one
occurrence of any given member.
sunionstore performs a similar function, but creates a new set
containing the set union at a given destination instead of just returning the
results:
sunionstore new_set presidents kings beatles

Output

(integer) 8

As with sinterstore and sdiffstore, sunionstore will

overwrite the destination key if it already exists.

Conclusion
This guide details a number of commands used to create and manage sets
in Redis. If there are other related commands, arguments, or procedures
you’d like to see outlined in this guide, please ask or make suggestions in
the comments below.
For more information on Redis commands, see our tutorial series on
How to Manage a Redis Database.
How To Manage Sorted Sets in Redis

Written by Mark Drake

Redis is an open-source, in-memory key-value data store. In Redis,
sorted sets are a data type similar to sets in that both are non repeating
groups of strings. The difference is that each member of a sorted set is
associated with a score, allowing them to be sorted from the smallest score
to the largest. As with sets, every member of a sorted set must be unique,
though multiple members can share the same score.
This tutorial explains how to create sorted sets, retrieve and remove
their members, and create new sorted sets from existing ones.

Creating Sorted Sets and Adding Members

To create a sorted set, use the zadd command. zadd accepts as
arguments the name of the key that will hold the sorted set, followed by
the score of the member you’re adding and the value of the member itself.
The following command will create a sorted set key named
faveGuitarists with one member, "Joe Pass", that has a score of
1:
zadd faveGuitarists 1 "Joe Pass"
zadd will return an integer that indicates how many members were
added to the sorted set if it was created successfully.

Output

(integer) 1
 You can add more than one member to a sorted set with zadd. Note that
their scores don’t need to be sequential, there can be gaps between scores,
and multiple members held in the same sorted set can share the same
score:
zadd faveGuitarists 4 "Stephen Malkmus" 2 "Rosetta
Tharpe" 3 "Bola Sete" 3 "Doug Martsch" 8
"Elizabeth Cotten" 12 "Nancy Wilson" 4 "Memphis
Minnie" 12 "Michael Houser"

Output

(integer) 8

zadd can accept the following options, which you must enter after the
key name and before the first member score:

NX or XX: These options have opposite effects, so you can only

include one of them in any zadd operation:

NX: Tells zadd not to update existing members. With this

option, zadd will only add new elements.
XX: Tells zadd to only update existing elements. With this
option, zadd will never add new members.

CH: Normally, zadd only returns the number of new elements added
to the sorted set. With this option included, though, zadd will return
the number changed elements. This includes newly added members
and members whose scores were changed.
 INCR: This causes the command to increment the member’s score
value. If the member doesn’t yet exist, the command will add it to the
sorted set with the increment as its score, as if its original score was
0. With INCR included, the zadd will return the member’s new
score if it’s successful. Note that you can only include one
score/member pair at a time when using this option.

Instead of passing the INCR option to zadd, you can instead use the
zincrby command which behaves the exact same way. Instead of giving
the sorted set member the value indicated by the score value like zadd, it
increments that member’s score up by that value. For example, the
following command increments the score of the member "Stephen
Malkmus", which was originally 4, up by 5 to 9.
zincrby faveGuitarists 5 "Stephen Malkmus"

Output

"9"

As is the case with the zadd command’s INCR option, if the specified
member doesn’t exist then zincrby will create it with the increment
value as its score.

Retrieving Members from Sorted Sets

The most fundamental way to retrieve the members held within a sorted
set is to use the zrange command. This command accepts as arguments
the name of the key whose members you want to retrieve and a range of
members held within it. The range is defined by two numbers that
represent zero-based indexes, meaning that 0 represents the first member
in the sorted set (or, the member with the lowest score), 1 represents the
next, and so on.
The following example will return the first four members from the
faveGuitarists sorted set created in the previous section:
zrange faveGuitarists 0 3

Output

1) "Joe Pass"
2) "Rosetta Tharpe"
3) "Bola Sete"
4) "Doug Martsch"

Note that if the sorted set you pass to zrange has two or more
elements that share the same score, it will sort those elements in
lexicographical, or alphabetical, order.
The start and stop indexes can also be negative numbers, with -1
representing the last member, -2 representing the second to last, and so
on:
zrange faveGuitarists -5 -2

Output

1) "Memphis Minnie"
2) "Elizabeth Cotten"
3) "Stephen Malkmus"
4) "Michael Houser"
 zrange can accept the WITHSCORES argument which, when included,
will also return the members’ scores:
zrange faveGuitarists 5 6 WITHSCORES

Output

1) "Elizabeth Cotten"
2) "8"
3) "Stephen Malkmus"
4) "9"

zrange can only return a range of members in ascending numerical

order. To reverse this and return a range in descending order, you must use
the zrevrange command. Think of this command as temporarily
reversing the order of the given sorted set before returning the members
that fall within the specified range. So with zrevrange, 0 will represent
the last member held in the key, 1 will represent the second to last, and so
on:
zrevrange faveGuitarists 0 5

Output

1) "Nancy Wilson"
2) "Michael Houser"
3) "Stephen Malkmus"
4) "Elizabeth Cotten"
5) "Memphis Minnie"
6) "Doug Martsch"
 zrevrange can also accept the WITHSCORES option.
You can return a range of members based on their scores with the
zrangebyscore command. In the following example, the command
will return any member held in the faveGuitarists key with a score
of 2, 3, or 4:
zrangebyscore faveGuitarists 2 4

Output

1) "Rosetta Tharpe"
2) "Bola Sete"
3) "Doug Martsch"
4) "Memphis Minnie"

The range is inclusive in this example, meaning that it will return

members with scores of 2 or 4. You can exclude either end of the range by
preceding it with an open parenthesis ((). The following example will
return every member with a score greater than or equal to 2, but less than
4:
zrangebyscore faveGuitarists 2 (4

Output

1) "Rosetta Tharpe"
2) "Bola Sete"
3) "Doug Martsch"

As with zrange, zrangebyscore can accept the WITHSCORES

argument. It also accepts the LIMIT option, which you can use to retrieve
only a selection of elements from the zrangebyscore output. This
option accepts an offset, which marks the first member in the range that
the command will return, and a count, which defines how many members
the command will return in total. For example, the following command
will look at the first six members of the faveGuitarists sorted set but
will only return 3 members from it, starting from the second member in
the range, represented by 1:
zrangebyscore faveGuitarists 0 5 LIMIT 1 3

Output

1) "Rosetta Tharpe"
2) "Bola Sete"
3) "Doug Martsch"

The zrevrangebyscore command returns a reversed range of

members based on their scores. The following command returns every
member of the set with a score between 10 and 6:
zrevrangebyscore faveGuitarists 10 6

Output

1) "Stephen Malkmus"
2) "Elizabeth Cotten"

As with zrangebyscore, zrevrangebyscore can accept both the

WITHSCORES and LIMIT options. Additionally, you can exclude either
end of the range by preceding it with an open parenthesis.
 There may be times when all the members in a sorted set have the same
score. In such a case, you can force redis to return a range of elements
sorted lexicographically, or in alphabetical order, with the zrangebylex
command. To try out this command, run the following zadd command to
create a sorted set where each member has the same score:
zadd SomervilleSquares 0 Davis 0 Inman 0 Union 0
porter 0 magoun 0 ball 0 assembly
zrangebylex must be followed by the name of a key, a start interval,
and a stop interval. The start and stop intervals must begin with an open
parenthesis (() or an open bracket ([), like this:
zrangebylex SomervilleSquares [a [z

Output

1) "assembly"
2) "ball"
3) "magoun"
4) "porter"

Notice that this example returned only four of the eight members in the
set, even though the command sought a range from a to z. This is because
Redis values are case-sensitive, so the members that begin with uppercase
letters were excluded from its output. To return those, you could run the
following:
zrangebylex SomervilleSquares [A [z
 Output

1) "Davis"
2) "Inman"
3) "Union"
4) "assembly"
5) "ball"
6) "magoun"
7) "porter"

zrangebylex also accepts the special characters -, which represents

negative infinity, and +, which represents positive infinity. Thus, the
following command syntax will also return every member of the sorted
set:
zrangebylex SomervilleSquares - +
Note that zrangebylex cannot return sorted set members in reverse
lexicographical (ascending alphabetical) order. To do that, use
zrevrangebylex:
zrevrangebylex SomervilleSquares + -

Output

1) "porter"
2) "magoun"
3) "ball"
4) "assembly"
5) "Union"
6) "Inman"
7) "Davis"
 Because it’s intended for use with sorted sets where every member has
the same score, zrangebylex does not accept the WITHSCORES option.
It does, however, accept the LIMIT option.

Retrieving Information about Sorted Sets

To find out how many members are in a given sorted set (or, in other
words, to determine its cardinality), use the zcard command. The
following example shows how many members are held in the
faveGuitarists key from the first section of this guide:
zcard faveGuitarists

Output

(integer) 9

zcount can tell you how many elements are held within a given sorted
set that fall within a range of scores. The first number following the key is
the start of the range and the second one is the end of the range:
zcount faveGuitarists 3 8

Output

(integer) 4

zscore outputs the score of a specified member of a sorted set:

zscore faveGuitarists "Bola Sete"
 Output

"3"

If either the specified member or key don’t exist, zscore will return
(nil).
zrank is similar to zscore, but instead of returning the given
member’s score, it instead returns its rank. In Redis, a rank is a zero-based
index of the members of a sorted set, ordered by their score. For example,
"Joe Pass" has a score of 1, but because that is the lowest score of any
member in the key, it has a rank of 0:
zrank faveGuitarists "Joe Pass"

Output

(integer) 0

There’s another Redis command called zrevrank which performs the

same function as zrank, but instead reverses the ranks of the members in
the set. In the following example, the member "Joe Pass" has the
lowest score, and consequently has the highest reversed rank:
zrevrank faveGuitarists "Joe Pass"

Output

(integer) 8

The only relation between a member’s score and their rank is where
their score stands in relation to those of other members. If there is a score
gap between two sequential members, that won’t be reflected in their rank.
Note that if two members have the same score, the one that comes first
alphabetically will have the lower rank.
Like zscore, zrank and zrevrank will return (nil) if the key or
member doesn’t exist.
zlexcount can tell you how many members are held in a sorted set
between a lexicographical range. The following example uses the
SomervilleSquares sorted set from the previous section:
zlexcount SomervilleSquares [M [t

Output

(integer) 5

This command follows the same syntax as the zrangebylex

command, so refer to the previous section for details on how to define a
string range.

Removing Members from Sorted Sets

The zrem command can remove one or more members from a sorted set:
zrem faveGuitarists "Doug Martsch" "Bola Sete"
zrem will return an integer indicating how many members it removed
from the sorted set:

Output

(integer) 2
 There are three Redis commands that allow you to remove members of
a sorted set based on a range. For example, if each member in a sorted set
has the same score, you can remove members based on a lexicographical
range with zremrangebylex. This command uses the same syntax as
zrangebylex. The following example will remove every member that
begins with a capital letter from the SomervilleSquares key created
in the previous section:
zremrangebylex SomervilleSquares [A [Z
zremrangebylex will output an integer indicating how many
members it removed:

Output

(integer) 3

You can also remove members based on a range of scores with the
zremrangebyscore command, which uses the same syntax as the
zrangebyscore command. The following example will remove every
member held in faveGuitarists with a score of 4, 5, or 6:
zremrangebyscore faveGuitarists 4 6

Output

(integer) 1

You can remove members from a set based on a range of ranks with the
zremrangebyrank command, which uses the same syntax as
zrangebyrank. The following command will remove the three
members of the sorted set with the lowest rankings, which are defined by a
range of zero-based indexes:
zremrangebyrank faveGuitarists 0 2

Output

(integer) 3

Note that numbers passed to remrangebyrank can also be negative,

with -1 representing the highest rank, -2 the next highest, and so on.

Creating New Sorted Sets from Existing Ones

Redis includes two commands that allow you to compare members of
multiple sorted sets and create new ones based on those comparisons:
zinterstore and zunionstore. To experiment with these
commands, run the following zadd commands to create some example
sorted sets.
zadd NewKids 1 "Jonathan" 2 "Jordan" 3 "Joey" 4
"Donnie" 5 "Danny"
zadd Nsync 1 "Justin" 2 "Chris" 3 "Joey" 4 "Lance"
5 "JC"
zinterstore finds the members shared by two or more sorted sets
— their intersection — and produces a new sorted set containing only
those members. This command must include, in order, the name of a
destination key where the intersecting members will be stored as a sorted
set, the number of keys being passed to zinterstore, and the names of
the keys you want to analyze:
zinterstore BoyBands 2 NewKids Nsync
zinterstore will return an integer showing the number of elements
stored to the destination sorted set. Because NewKids and Nsync only
share one member, "Joey", the command will return 1:

Output

(integer) 1

Be aware that if the destination key already exists, zinterstore will

overwrite its contents.
zunionstore will create a new sorted set holding every member of
the keys passed to it. This command uses the same syntax as
zinterstore, and requires the name of a destination key, the number of
keys being passed to the command, and the names of the keys:
zunionstore SuperGroup 2 NewKids Nsync
Like zinterstore, zunionstore will return an integer showing
the number of elements stored in the destination key. Even though both of
the original sorted sets held five members, because sorted sets can’t have
repeating members and each key has one member named "Joey", the
resulting integer will be 9:

Output

(integer) 9

Like zinterstore, zunionstore will overwrite the contents of

the destination key if it already exists.
 To give you more control over member scores when creating new sorted
sets with zinterstore and zunionstore, both of these commands
accept the WEIGHTS and AGGREGATE options.
The WEIGHTS option is followed by one number for every sorted set
included in the command which weight, or multiply, the scores of each
member. The first number after the WEIGHTS option weights the scores of
the first key passed to the command, the second number weights the
second key, and so on.
The following example creates a new sorted set holding the intersecting
keys from the NewKids and Nsync sorted sets. It weights the scores in
the NewKids key by a factor of three, and weights those in the Nsync
key by a factor of seven:
zinterstore BoyBandsWeighted 2 NewKids Nsync
WEIGHTS 3 7
If the WEIGHTS option isn’t included, the weighting defaults to 1 for
both zinterstore and zunionstore.
AGGREGATE accepts three sub-options. The first of these, SUM,
implements zinterstore and zunionstore’s default behavior by
adding the scores of matching members in the combined sets.
If you run a zinterstore or zunionstore operation on two sorted
sets that share one member, but this member has a different score in each
set, you can force the operation to assign the lower of the two scores in the
new set with the MIN suboption.
zinterstore BoyBandsWeightedMin 2 NewKids Nsync
WEIGHTS 3 7 AGGREGATE MIN
Because the two sorted sets only have one matching member with the
same score (3), this command will create a new set with a member that
has the lower of the two weighted scores:
zscore BoyBandsWeightedMin "Joey"

Output

"9"

Likewise, AGGREGATE can force zinterstore or zunionstore to

assign the higher of the two scores with the MAX option:
zinterstore BoyBandsWeightedMax 2 NewKids Nsync
WEIGHTS 3 7 AGGREGATE MAX
This command creates a new set with on one member, "Joey", that has
the higher of the two weighted scores:
zscore BoyBandsWeightedMax "Joey"

Output

"21"

It can be helpful to think of WEIGHTS as a way to temporarily

manipulate members’ scores before they’re analyzed. Likewise, it’s
helpful to think of the AGGREGATE option as a way to decide how to
control members’ scores before they’re added to their new sets.

Conclusion
This guide details a number of commands used to create and manage
sorted sets in Redis. If there are other related commands, arguments, or
procedures you’d like to see outlined in this guide, please ask or make
suggestions in the comments below.
For more information on Redis commands, see our tutorial series on
How to Manage a Redis Database.
How To Run Transactions in Redis

Written by Mark Drake

Redis is an open-source, in-memory key-value data store. Redis allows
you to plan a sequence of commands and run them one after another, a
procedure known as a transaction. Each transaction is treated as an
uninterrupted and isolated operation, which ensures data integrity. Clients
cannot run commands while a transaction block is being executed
This tutorial goes over how to execute and cancel transactions, and also
includes some information on pitfalls commonly associated with
transactions.

Running Transactions
The multi command tells Redis to begin a transaction block. Any
subsequent commands will be queued up until you run an exec command,
which will execute them.
The following commands form a single transaction block. The first
command initiates the transaction, the second sets a key holding a string
with the value of 1, the third increases the value by 1, the fourth increases
its value by 40, the fifth returns the current value of the string, and the last
one executes the transaction block:
multi
set key_MeaningOfLife 1
incr key_MeaningOfLife
incrby key_MeaningOfLife 40
get key_MeaningOfLife
exec
After running multi, redis-cli will respond to each of the
following commands with QUEUED. After you run the exec command, it
will show the output of each of those commands individually:

Output

1) OK
2) (integer) 2
3) (integer) 42
4) "42"

Commands included in a transaction block are run sequentially in the

order they’re queued. Redis transactions are atomic, meaning that either
every command in a transaction block is processed (meaning that it’s
accepted as valid and queued to be executed) or none are. However, even if
a command is successfully queued, it may still produce an error when
executed. In such cases, the other commands in the transaction can still
run, but Redis will skip the error-causing command. See the section on
understanding transaction errors for more details.

Canceling Transactions
To cancel a transaction, run the discard command. This prevents any
previously-queued commands from running:
multi
set key_A 146
incrby key_A 10
discard

Output

OK

The discard command returns the connection to a normal state,

which tells Redis to run single commands as usual. You’ll need to run
multi again to tell the server you’re starting another transaction.

Understanding Transaction Errors

Some commands may be impossible to queue, such as commands with
syntax errors. If you attempt to queue a syntactically incorrect command
Redis will return an error.
The following transaction createst a key named key_A and then
attempts to increment it by 10. However, a spelling error in the incrby
command causes and error and closes the transaction:
multi
set key_A 146
incrbuy key_A 10

Output

(error) ERR unknown command 'incrbuy'

If you try to run an exec command after trying to queue a command

with a syntax error like this one, you will receive another error message
telling you that the transaction was discarded:
exec

Output

(error) EXECABORT Transaction discarded because of

previous errors.

In cases like this, you’ll need to restart the transaction block and make
sure you enter each command correctly.
Some impossible commands are possible to queue, such as running
incr on a key containing only a string. Because such command is
syntactically correct, Redis won’t return an error if you try to include it in
a transaction and won’t prevent you from running exec. In cases like this,
all other commands in the queue will be executed, but the impossible
command will return an error:
multi
set key_A 146
incrby key_A "ten"
exec

Output

1) OK
2) (error) ERR value is not an integer or out of
range

For more information on how Redis handles errors inside transactions,

see the official documentation on the subject.
Conclusion
This guide details a number of commands used to create, run, and cancel
transactions in Redis. If there are other related commands, arguments, or
procedures you’d like to see outlined in this guide, please ask or make
suggestions in the comments below.
For more information on Redis commands, see our tutorial series on
How to Manage a Redis Database.
How To Expire Keys in Redis

Written by Mark Drake

Redis is an open-source, in-memory key-value data store. Redis keys
are persistent by default, meaning that the Redis server will continue to
store them unless they are deleted manually. There may, however, be cases
where you’ve set a key but you know you will want to delete it after a
certain amount of time has passed; in other words, you want the key to be
volatile. This tutorial explains how to set keys to expire, check the time
remaining until a key’s expiration, and cancel a key’s expiration setting.

Setting Keys to Expire

You can set an expiration time for an existing key with the expire
command, which takes the name of the key and the number of seconds
until expiration as arguments. To demonstrate this, run the following two
commands. The first creates a string key named key_melon with a value
of "cantaloupe", and the second sets it to expire after 450 seconds:
set key_melon "cantaloupe"
expire key_melon 450
If the timeout was set successfully, the expire command will return
(integer) 1. If setting the timeout failed, it will instead return
(integer) 0.
Alternatively, you can set the key to expire at a specific point in time
with the expireat command. Instead of the number of seconds before
expiration, it takes a Unix timestamp as an argument. A Unix timestamp is
the number of seconds since the Unix epoch, or 00:00:00 UTC on January
1, 1970. There are a number of tools online you can use to find the Unix
timestamp of a specific date and time, such as EpochConverter or
UnixTimestamp.com.
For example, to set key_melon to expire at 8:30pm GMT on May 1,
2025 (represented by the Unix timestamp 1746131400), you could use
the following command:
expireat key_melon 1746131400
Note that if the timestamp you pass to expireat has already occurred,
it will delete the key immediately.

Checking How Long Until a Key Expires

Any time you set a key to expire, you can check the time remaining until
expiry (in seconds) with ttl, which stands for “time to live”:
ttl key_melon

Output

(integer) 433

For more granular information, you can run pttl which will instead
return the amount of time until a key expires in milliseconds:
pttl key_melon

Output

(integer) 431506
 Both ttl and pttl will return (integer) -1 if the key hasn’t been
set to expire and (integer) -2 if the key does not exist.

Persisting Keys
If a key has been set to expire, any command that overwrites the contents
of a key — like set or getset — will clear a key’s timeout value. To
manually clear a key’s timeout, use the persist command:
persist key_melon
The persist command will return (integer) 1 if it completed
successfully, indicating that the key will no longer expire.

Conclusion
This guide details a number of commands used to manipulate and check
key persistence in Redis. If there are other related commands, arguments,
or procedures you’d like to see outlined in this guide, please ask or make
suggestions in the comments below.
For more information on Redis commands, see our tutorial series on
How to Manage a Redis Database.
How To Troubleshoot Issues in Redis

Written by Mark Drake

Redis is an open-source, in-memory key-value data store. It comes with
several commands that can help with troubleshooting and debugging
issues. Because of Redis’s nature as an in-memory key-value store, many
of these commands focus on memory management, but there are others
that are valuable for providing an overview of the state of your Redis
server. This tutorial will provide details on how to use some of these
commands to help diagnose and resolve issues you may run into as you
use Redis.

Troubleshooting Memory-related Issues

memory usage tells you how much memory is currently being used by a
single key. It takes the name of a key as an argument and outputs the
number of bytes it uses:
memory usage key_meaningOfLife

Output

(integer) 42

For a more general understanding of how your Redis server is using

memory, you can run the memory stats command:
memory stats
 This command outputs an array of memory-related metrics and their
values. The following are the metrics reported by memory stats:

peak.allocated: The peak number of bytes consumed by Redis

total.allocated: The total number of bytes allocated by Redis
startup.allocated: The initial number of bytes consumed by
Redis at startup
replication.backlog: The size of the replication backlog, in
bytes
clients.slaves: The total size of all replica overheads (the
output and query buffers and connection contexts)
clients.normal: The total size of all client overheads
aof.buffer: The total size of the current and rewrite append-only
file buffers
db.0: The overheads of the main and expiry dictionaries for each
database in use on the server, reported in bytes
overhead.total: The sum of all overheads used to manage
Redis’s keyspace
keys.count: The total number of keys stored in all the databases
on the server
keys.bytes-per-key: The ratio of the server’s net memory
usage and keys.count
dataset.bytes: The size of the dataset, in bytes
dataset.percentage: The percentage of Redis’s net memory
usage taken by dataset.bytes
peak.percentage: The percentage of peak.allocated taken
out of total.allocated
 fragmentation: The ratio of the amount of memory currently in
use divided by the physical memory Redis is actually using

memory malloc-stats provides an internal statistics report from

jemalloc, the memory allocator used by Redis on Linux systems:
memory malloc-stats
If it seems like you’re running into memory-related issues, but parsing
the output of the previous commands proves to be unhelpful, you can try
running memory doctor:
memory doctor
This feature will output any memory consumption issues that it can find
and suggest potential solutions.

Getting General Information about Your Redis Instance

A debugging command that isn’t directly related to memory management
is monitor. This command allows you to see a constant stream of every
command processed by the Redis server:
monitor

Output

OK
1566157213.896437 [0 127.0.0.1:47740] "auth"
"foobared"
1566157215.870306 [0 127.0.0.1:47740] "set"
"key_1" "878"
 Another command useful for debugging is info, which returns several
blocks of information and statistics about the server:
info

Output

# Server
redis_version:4.0.9
redis_git_sha1:00000000
redis_git_dirty:0
redis_build_id:9435c3c2879311f3
redis_mode:standalone
os:Linux 4.15.0-52-generic x86_64
. . .

This command returns a lot of information. If you only want to see one
info block, you can specify it as an argument to info:
info CPU

Output

# CPU
used_cpu_sys:173.16
used_cpu_user:70.89
used_cpu_sys_children:0.01
used_cpu_user_children:0.04

Note that the information returned by the info command will depend
on which version of Redis you’re using.
Using the keys Command
The keys command is helpful in cases where you’ve forgotten the name
of a key, or perhaps you’ve created one but accidentally misspelled its
name. keys looks for keys that match a pattern:
keys pattern
The following glob-style variables are supported

? is a wildcard standing for any single character, so s?mmy matches

sammy, sommy, and sqmmy
* is a wildcard that stands for any number of characters, including no
characters at all, so sa*y matches sammy, say, sammmmmmy, and
salmony
You can specify two or more characters that the pattern can include
by wrapping them in brackets, so s[ai]mmy will match sammy and
simmy, but not summy
To set a wildcard that disregards one or more letters, wrap them in
brackets and precede them with a carrot (^), so s[^oi]mmy will
match sammy and sxmmy, but not sommy or simmy
To set a wildcard that includes a range of letters, separate the
beginning and end of the range with a hyphen and wrap it in brackets,
so s[a-o]mmy will match sammy, skmmy, and sommy, but not
srmmy

Warning: The Redis documentation warns that keys should almost

never be used in a production environment, since it can have a major
negative impact on performance.
Conclusion
This guide details a number of commands that are helpful for
troubleshooting and resolving issues one might encounter as they work
with Redis. If there are other related commands, arguments, or procedures
you’d like to see outlined in this guide, please ask or make suggestions in
the comments below.
For more information on Redis commands, see our tutorial series on
How to Manage a Redis Database.
How To Change Redis’s Configuration
from the Command Line

Written by Mark Drake

Introduction
Redis is an open-source, in-memory key-value data store. Redis has
several commands that allow you to make changes to the Redis server’s
configuration settings on the fly. This tutorial will go over some of these
commands, and also explain how to make these configuration changes
permanent.

Changing Redis’s Configuration

The commands outlined in this section will only alter the Redis server’s
behavior for the duration of the current session, or until you run config
rewrite which will make them permanent. You can alter the Redis
configuration file directly by opening and editing it with your preferred
text editor. For example, you can use nano to do so:
sudo nano /etc/redis/redis.conf
Warning: The config set command is considered dangerous. By
changing your Redis configuration file, it’s possible that you will cause
your Redis server to behave in unexpected or undesirable ways. We
recommend that you only run the config set command if you are
testing out its behavior or you’re absolutely certain that you want to make
changes to your Redis configuration.
 It may be in your interest to rename this command to something with a
lower likelihood of being run accidentally.
config set allows you to reconfigure Redis at runtime without
having to restart the service. It uses the following syntax:
config set parameter value
For example, if you wanted to change the name of the database dump
file Redis will produce after you run a save command, you might run a
command like the following:
config set "dbfilename" "new_file.rdb"
If the configuration change is valid, the command will return OK.
Otherwise it will return an error.
Note: Not every parameter in the redis.conf file can be changed
with a config set operation. For example, you cannot change the
authentication password defined by the requirepass parameter.

Making Configuration Changes Permanent

config set does not permanently alter the Redis instance’s
configuration file; it only changes Redis’s behavior at runtime. To edit
redis.conf after running a config-set command and make the
current session’s configuration permanent, run config rewrite:
config rewrite
This command does its best to preserve the comments and overall
structure of the original redis.conf file, with only minimal changes to
match the settings currently used by the server.
Like config set, if the rewrite is successful config rewrite
will return OK.
Checking Redis’s Configuration
To read the current configuration parameters of a Redis server, run the
config get command. config get takes a single argument, which
can be either an exact match of a parameter used in redis.conf or a
glob pattern. For example:
config get repl*
Depending on your Redis configuration, this command might return:

Output

1) "repl-ping-slave-period"
2) "10"
3) "repl-timeout"
4) "60"
5) "repl-backlog-size"
6) "1048576"
7) "repl-backlog-ttl"
8) "3600"
9) "repl-diskless-sync-delay"
10) "5"
11) "repl-disable-tcp-nodelay"
12) "no"
13) "repl-diskless-sync"
14) "no"

You can also return all of the configuration parameters supported by

config set by running config get *.
Conclusion
This guide details the redis-cli commands used to make changes to a
Redis server’s configuration file on the fly. If there are other related
commands, arguments, or procedures you’d like to see outlined in this
guide, please ask or make suggestions in the comments below.
For more information on Redis commands, see our tutorial series on
How to Manage a Redis Database.