Redis Guide for AI Agents

This document provides guidance for AI agents working with Redis, including key concepts, common patterns, and best practices.

What is Redis?

Redis is an open-source, in-memory data structure store used as a database, cache, message broker, and streaming engine. It supports various data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, geospatial indexes, and streams.

Key Concepts

Data Structures

• Strings: Binary-safe strings up to 512 MB
• Lists: Collections of strings ordered by insertion order
• Sets: Unordered collections of unique strings
• Sorted Sets: Sets ordered by a score
• Hashes: Maps of field-value pairs
• Streams: Append-only log data structure
• Bitmaps: Bit-level operations on strings
• HyperLogLogs: Probabilistic data structure for cardinality estimation
• Geospatial: Latitude/longitude coordinate storage and queries
• JSON: Native JSON document storage (Redis Stack)

Persistence

Redis offers multiple persistence options:

• RDB (Redis Database): Point-in-time snapshots
• AOF (Append Only File): Log of every write operation
• Hybrid: Combination of RDB and AOF

Replication and High Availability

• Replication: Master-replica architecture for read scaling and data redundancy
• Sentinel: Automatic failover and monitoring
• Cluster: Horizontal scaling with automatic sharding

Common Use Cases

1. Caching: Store frequently accessed data to reduce database load
2. Session Management: Store user session data
3. Real-time Analytics: Count, rank, and aggregate data in real-time
4. Message Queues: Pub/Sub messaging and stream processing
5. Leaderboards: Sorted sets for ranking systems
6. Rate Limiting: Track and limit API requests
7. Geospatial Applications: Location-based queries
8. Vector Search: Similarity search with Redis Stack

Basic Commands

String Operations

SET key value [EX seconds] [NX|XX]
GET key
INCR key
DECR key
MGET key1 key2 ...
MSET key1 value1 key2 value2 ...

Hash Operations

HSET key field value
HGET key field
HMGET key field1 field2 ...
HGETALL key
HINCRBY key field increment

List Operations

LPUSH key value1 [value2 ...]
RPUSH key value1 [value2 ...]
LPOP key
RPOP key
LRANGE key start stop

Set Operations

SADD key member1 [member2 ...]
SMEMBERS key
SISMEMBER key member
SINTER key1 key2 ...
SUNION key1 key2 ...

Sorted Set Operations

ZADD key score1 member1 [score2 member2 ...]
ZRANGE key start stop [WITHSCORES]
ZRANK key member
ZINCRBY key increment member

Key Management

DEL key1 [key2 ...]
EXISTS key1 [key2 ...]
EXPIRE key seconds
TTL key
KEYS pattern (use with caution in production)
SCAN cursor [MATCH pattern] [COUNT count]

Best Practices for Agents

1. Connection Management

• Use connection pooling for better performance
• Close connections properly when done
• Handle connection errors gracefully

2. Key Naming Conventions

• Use descriptive, hierarchical names: user:1000:profile
• Use colons (:) as separators
• Keep keys reasonably short but readable
• Include version numbers if schema changes: user:v2:1000

3. Performance Optimization

• Use pipelining for multiple commands
• Prefer SCAN over KEYS in production
• Use appropriate data structures for your use case
• Set expiration times on temporary data
• Use MGET/MSET for batch operations

4. Data Modeling

• Denormalize data for read performance
• Use hashes for objects with multiple fields
• Use sorted sets for rankings and time-series data
• Consider memory usage when choosing data structures

5. Error Handling

• Always check command return values
• Handle nil responses appropriately
• Implement retry logic for transient failures
• Use transactions (MULTI/EXEC) for atomic operations

6. Security

• Never expose Redis directly to the internet
• Use ACLs (Access Control Lists) for authentication
• Enable TLS for encrypted connections
• Rename or disable dangerous commands in production

Common Patterns

Caching Pattern

GET cache_key
if nil:
    data = fetch_from_database()
    SET cache_key data EX 3600
    return data
else:
    return cached_data

Rate Limiting Pattern

key = "rate_limit:user:" + user_id + ":" + current_minute
count = INCR key
if count == 1:
    EXPIRE key 60
if count > limit:
    return "rate limit exceeded"

Distributed Lock Pattern

SET lock_key unique_value NX EX 10
if success:
    # perform critical section
    # release lock only if we own it
    DEL lock_key (with Lua script to verify ownership)

Resources in This Repository

• /content/commands/: Complete command reference
• /content/develop/: Development guides and tutorials
• /content/operate/: Operational guides for deployment and management
• /content/integrate/: Integration guides for various languages and frameworks

Version-Specific Features

Redis evolves with each version. Check the version-specific command references:

• Redis 8.6: Latest features including HOTKEYS command
• Redis 8.4: Previous stable release
• Redis 8.2, 8.0: Earlier 8.x releases
• Redis 7.4, 7.2: 7.x series
• Redis 6.2: Long-term support release

Getting Help

When working with Redis commands:

1. Check the command documentation in /content/commands/
2. Look for code examples in /content/develop/
3. Review integration guides for your programming language
4. Consider the Redis version you're targeting

Important Notes

• Redis is single-threaded for command execution (though I/O is multi-threaded in recent versions)
• All data is stored in memory (with optional persistence to disk)
• Commands are atomic
• Use Lua scripts for complex atomic operations
• Redis Cluster has some limitations (e.g., multi-key operations must be on the same hash slot)