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Redis Basics

Redis#

  • Remote Dictionary Server
  • Database for the instant experience
  • In memory open source database
  • Redis Enterprise is the product - backups, replication and clustering.
  • Redis is for ephemeral data

Data structures:

  • Strings
  • Bitmaps
  • Hashes
  • Lists
  • Sets
  • Sorted Sets
  • Geospacial Data, etc
  • Hyperloglog
  • Streams

Redis does not let you nest data easily - the reason is speed - reduces performance. Rational choices made.

Twitter: 0.5 - 1 PB booking.com: 10 - 20TB Snapchat: 40TB

  • Written in C
  • Data entitely served from memory - no buffering
  • Single-threaded and lock free

Testing#

Linear scaling

1 node 5.3M ops per second 40 nodes 201M ops per second

Redis Data Structures#

Use Cases#

  • Cache
  • Message brokers/queues
  • User sessions
  • Real-time recommendations
  • Leaderboards
Strings: simple cache#

db overload or bad respense tme - strings are perfect for this. These commands below only work with strings.

SET 
GET

strings are byte-safe your data will not be corrupted by redis - store images etc.

  • All keys have an expiry - very useful for caching
  • Register to listen for changes on keys and operations - pubsub (no persistence)

It is good practice to use a : to namespace keys

SET keyname value

SET userid:1 "8754"
OK

Response will be OK

GET keyname
GET userid:1
"8754"

Expiring keys

EXPIRE keyname seconds
EXPIRE userid:1 60

Delete a key

UNLINK

UNLINK keyname
UNLINK userid:1

UNLINK will asynchronously reclaim memory - from moment you send the command the key will not be available DEL will stop server for brief amount of time and reclaim the memory

EXPIRE

EXPIRE foo 10

Will have access afterwards gone

eviction?

Hashes: user sessions#

Hashes - hash maps. Essentially dictionaries.

You cannot nest values

Problem:

  • Maintain session state across multiple sessions
  • Mulitple session variables
  • Want sticky state
  • High speed and low latency

State must be saved on redis not on the application

eCommerce good - show cart state on every page

  • HSET to save session variables as key/value pairs
  • HMGET to retrieve values
  • HINCRBY - incremeent any field in hash structure

Same user logged in from different devices might have seperate user session

HSET keyname field value field value field value

HSET usrses:1 userid 8754 name Dave ip 10.20.104.31 hits 1
4 # number of fields

Get the dictionary

HMGET usrses:1

Change a field value

HSET keyname field value
HSET usrses:1 lastpage homepage

Delete

HDEL keyname field
HDEL usrses:1 lastpage

Increment a numeric field in a hash

HINCBY keyname field value
HINCBY usrses:1 hits 1

Example:

127.0.0.1:6379> HSET usersess:02 userid 8675309 firstname John lastname Smith ip 127.0.0.1 lastvisit "home"
(integer) 5
127.0.0.1:6379> HGETALL usersess:02
1) "userid"
2) "8675309"
3) "firstname"
4) "John"
5) "lastname"
6) "Smith"
7) "ip"
8) "127.0.0.1"
9) "lastvisit"
10) "home"
127.0.0.1:6379> HINCRBY usersess:02 hits 1
(integer) 1
127.0.0.1:6379> HMGET userid firstname hits
1) (nil)
2) (nil)
127.0.0.1:6379> HMGET usersess:02 userid firstname hits
1) "8675309"
2) "John"
3) "1"
127.0.0.1:6379> HSET usersess:02 ip 198.1.1.0
(integer) 0
127.0.0.1:6379> HMGET usersess:02 ip
1) "198.1.1.0"
127.0.0.1:6379> HDEL usersess:02 lastname
(integer) 1

Lists: Message Queues#

Problem:

  • Tasks need to be worked on asynchronously to reduce block/wait times
  • Lots of times to be worked on
  • Assign items to worker process and remove from queue at the same time
  • Buffering high speed data-ingestion

Lists in redis are linked lists: O(1)

LPUSH: push item from left end of queue RPUSH: push add values at the right of the queue RPOPLPUSH: pops an item on one queue and pushes it on the left side of another - either in one of the lists even during failures

LPUSH key value
LPUSH queue 1 orange

RPUSH queue1 green

RPOPLPUSH key key
RPOPLPUSH queue1 queue2

LPOP key
LPOP Foo

127.0.0.1:6379> lpush pizzas margherita mrinara capricciosa
(integer) 3
127.0.0.1:6379> rpoplpush pizzas processing
"margherita"
127.0.0.1:6379> lrange pizzas 0 3
1) "capricciosa"
2) "mrinara"
127.0.0.1:6379> lrange processing 0 3
1) "margherita"
127.0.0.1:6379> lpop processing
"margherita"
127.0.0.1:6379> lrange processing 0 3
(empty list or set)

Better to do it atomicaly

Sets: Real-time recommendation engine#

People that read this article also like

  • Recommend similar purchases
  • Identify fraud

SETS are unique collections of strings SADD add tags to articke SISMEMBER check an article has a given tag

SET key member member member 
SET colours orange blue white red green

Create a set

SADD tag1 one two three

Find members of a set

SMEMBERS tag3

Intersection of all sets

SINTER tag1 tag2 tag3

Example:

127.0.0.1:6379> SADD colors:all red orange yellow green blue indigo violet
(integer) 7
127.0.0.1:6379> SADD colors:friends yellow pink
(integer) 2
127.0.0.1:6379> SADD colors:myfavs blue black red
(integer) 3
127.0.0.1:6379> SINTER colors:all colors:friends colors:myfavs
(empty list or set)
127.0.0.1:6379> SINTER colors:all colors:friends
1) "yellow"
127.0.0.1:6379> SINTER colors:all colors:myfavs
1) "red"
2) "blue"

Also can get the union with:

127.0.0.1:6379> SUNION color:myfavs colors:friends
1) "yellow"
2) "pink"

Sorted Sets: Game Leaderboards#

Problem:

  • Many users playing a game collect points
  • Display a real-time leaderboard
  • Who is your nearest competition
  • Dask-based bd is too slow

Sorted list automatically keeps list of users sorted by score

Add to a sorted set

ZADD key score member score member
ZADD game:1 10000 id:2 21000 id:1

Score must be a number - needs to be sorted

Increment member

ZINCRBY key incremeber member
ZINCRBY game:1 10000 id:3

Get a range

ZREVRANGE key start stop
ZREVRANGE game:1 0 0

127.0.0.1:6379> ZADD members:1 22 sw 26 cw 53 eh 32 ch 28 sh
(integer) 5
127.0.0.1:6379> ZREVRANGE members:1 0 0
1) "eh"
127.0.0.1:6379> ZREVRANGE members:1 4 4
1) "sw"
127.0.0.1:6379> ZREVRANGE members:1 -1 -1
1) "sw"
127.0.0.1:6379> ZRANGE members:1 0 0 WITHSCORES
1) "sw"
2) "22"

GeoSet: Search By Location#

Give me all the pharmacies in a 2km radius

Behind the scenes geosets are sorted sets that you can intersect with another set

How far am I from the hospital?

GEORADIUS

Hyperloglog Datastructure#
Translating Redis-CLI into your Language#

Python

redisClient.zadd("game:1", 10000, "id:1")
Complexity#

Redis will give you the big O notation

Redis Modules#

Extensions to redis

  • JSON
  • RedisAI
  • Search
  • Graph
  • RedisBloom
  • RedisTimeSeries
  • RedisGraph

Persistance#

2 persistence mechanism, which aare the same as most other database:

  • Snapshots - whole dataset persisted periodically
  • Writeahead log - Append only file

You can turn persistence mechanisms off - eg. cache

Clients#

Redis will return a byte-string, you can specify decode_responses=True to not get byte strings back.

redis = Redis(host=os.environ.get("REDIS_HOST", "localhost"),
            port=os.environ.get("REDIS_PORT", 6379),
            db=0, decode_responses=True)

however that will break images stored as string

Manage Distributed State#

Redis Streams - Data processing pipeline and are time directed.

Why Redis?#

IoT, eCommerce, Personalizaton, Search…

Telecoms Billing: CDR’s and SDR’s

Connect#

Start the redis CLI

redis-cli

Quoting to set values to a specific key, you need to use quoting when value has spaces

SET somekey "this is a test"

Sources#