set expiry for Hashmap values in Redis? - redis

How do I set expiry for hashmaps in Redis like I do for regular values using SETX.
I want to provide TTL for a session for which I am storing a hasmap.
Can I create a Hashmap using SETEX itself ?

No, you can't create hash with SETEX (which is a strings methods). You can call EXPIRE on hash key, but that will expire the whole hash. There's no support at the moment for expiration of individual hash key/value pairs.
Update:
If you wanted to set expiration on the whole hash while setting its individual elements, you can achieve that in several ways.
Use pipelining. Pipelining is a special mode of operation where redis client issues several commands in quick succession, not waiting for a reply to send next one. Here's an example in ruby:
redis.pipelined do
redis.hset "foo", "bar", 1
redis.expire "foo", 300
end
Use transactions. Without watched keys this is similar to pipelining (for a transaction can't abort). The commands are guaranteed to run together and atomically (several pipelines can run interleaved, transactions are serialized)
redis.multi do
redis.hset "foo", "bar", 1
redis.expire "foo", 300
end
Use lua scripting to implement your custom HSETEX command. It will be executed atomically and you just have to send one command (instead of 2(pipelining) or 4 (transaction)).

Related

Can I override a list value with a new list, natively in Redis?

I'd like to use the list data type in Redis, but I'd like to simply override/set the list with a value instead of interacting with it in push/pop fashion.
For my business case, I need the queryable nature of a list, but need to set/override the entire list.
Is this possible with native Redis commands?
(Not thread safe, but I can delete the key and then use LPUSH). Perhaps this could be wrapped in a Lua Script if needed.
I don't think that's possible. Your best bet for a secure and nice solution would be to use a Lua script, or a transaction, to make sure it's executed as an atomic operation. One possible option could be:
MULTI
DEL my_list
RPUSH my_list "A" "B" "C"
EXEC
If you're using expiration for the key, before removing it you could read the remaining expiry time with TTL my_list.

What Redis data type fit the most for following example

I have following scenario:
Fetch array of numbers (from REDIS) conditionally
For each number do some async stuff (fetch something from DB based on number)
For each thing in result set from DB do another async stuff
Periodically repeat 1. 2. 3. because new numbers will be constantly added to REDIS structure.Those numbers represent unix timestamp in milliseconds so out of the box those numbers will always be sorted in time of addition
Conditionally means fetch those unix timestamp from REDIS that are less or equal to current unix timestamp in milliseconds(Date.now())
Question is what REDIS data type fit the most for this use case having in mind that this code will be scaled up to N instances, so N instances will share access to single REDIS instance. To equally share the load each instance will read for example first(oldest) 5 numbers from REDIS. Numbers are unique (adding same number should fail silently) so REDIS SET seems like a good choice but reading M first elements from REDIS set seems impossible.
To prevent two different instance of the code to read same numbers REDIS read operation should be atomic, it should read the numbers and delete them. If any async operation fail on specific number (steps 2. and 3.), numbers should be added again to REDIS to be handled again. They should be re-added back to the head not to the end to be handled again as soon as possible. As far as i know SADD would push it to the tail.
SMEMBERS key would read everything, it looks like a hammer to me. I would need to include some application logic to get first five than to check what is less or equal to Date.now() and then to delete those and to wrap somehow everything in single transaction. Besides that set cardinality can be huge.
SSCAN sounds interesting but i don't have any clue how it works in "scaled" environment like described above. Besides that, per REDIS docs: The SCAN family of commands only offer limited guarantees about the returned elements since the collection that we incrementally iterate can change during the iteration process. Like described above collection will be changed frequently
A more appropriate data structure would be the Sorted Set - members have a float score that is very suitable for storing a timestamp and you can perform range searches (i.e. anything less or equal a given value).
The relevant starting points are the ZADD, ZRANGEBYSCORE and ZREMRANGEBYSCORE commands.
To ensure the atomicity when reading and removing members, you can choose between the the following options: Redis transactions, Redis Lua script and in the next version (v4) a Redis module.
Transactions
Using transactions simply means doing the following code running on your instances:
MULTI
ZRANGEBYSCORE <keyname> -inf <now-timestamp>
ZREMRANGEBYSCORE <keyname> -inf <now-timestamp>
EXEC
Where <keyname> is your key's name and <now-timestamp> is the current time.
Lua script
A Lua script can be cached and runs embedded in the server, so in some cases it is a preferable approach. It is definitely the best approach for short snippets of atomic logic if you need flow control (remember that a MULTI transaction returns the values only after execution). Such a script would look as follows:
local r = redis.call('ZRANGEBYSCORE', KEYS[1], '-inf', ARGV[1])
redis.call('ZREMRANGEBYSCORE', KEYS[1], '-inf', ARGV[1])
return r
To run this, first cache it using SCRIPT LOAD and then call it with EVALSHA like so:
EVALSHA <script-sha> 1 <key-name> <now-timestamp>
Where <script-sha> is the sha1 of the script returned by SCRIPT LOAD.
Redis modules
In the near future, once v4 is GA you'll be able to write and use modules. Once this becomes a reality, you'll be able to use this module we've made that provides the ZPOP command and could be extended to cover this use case as well.

How to combine muli-fields values and sorted time-ranges using Redis

I am trying to insert time based records with multiple fields on the values (with TTL enabled).
For the multiple fields the best way to do it via Redis is using HSET:
HSET user:32 name "johns" timecreated "3333311232" address "somewhere"
I also try to read those values via time range:
for example return all history records (for example user 32) which was inserted in the last day:
so the best for that would be storing via ZADD using scores(this time I am losing the hash-map structure for easy retrieval):
ZADD user:32 3333311232 "name=johns,timecreated=3333311232,address=somewhere"
On the top of the things I want to add TTL for each record
Any idea how I could optimize my design?
I could split into two but that will requires two queries when reading:
ZADD user:32 3333311232 "user:32:3333311232"
HMSET user:32:3333311232 name “johns” timecreated “3333311232” address="somewhere"
than to retrieve ill need:
//some range
ZRANGEBYSCORE user:32 3333311232 333331123
result: 1389772850
now to get all information: HGETALL user:32:1389772850
What do you think?
Thank you,
ray.
The two methods you describe are the two common approaches. If you store the entire object in the ZSET, you would typically store it as a JSON string. If you don't need "random" access to the object, that's a valid approach.
I usually go for the other approach; a ZSET combined with hashes. the two queries are not a big deal. You could even abstract it away with a Lua script; see EVAL.
Regarding the TTL, while you cannot expire individual ZSET values, you could expire the hash, and use keyspace notifications to listen for the expired event, and remove the corresponding value from the ZSET.
Let me know if you need some more specifics.

Set a value to a key with ttl

Is it possible to setnx a key with a value and a ttl in single command in redis
I am trying to implement locking in redis and http://redis.io/commands/hsetnx seems like the best way to do that. It is atomic and returns 0 if a key is already present. Is it possible to HSETNX with TTL
e.g.
HSETNX myhash mykey "myvalue" 10
#and key expires after 10 seconds, and a subsequent HSETNX after 10 seconds returns a value 1 i.e. it behaves as if mykey is not present in myhash
The main problem is that Redis have no support for fields expiration in hashmaps.
You can only expire the entire hashmap by calling EXPIRE on myhash.
So, you should reconsider using ordinary Redis strings instead of hashmaps, because they support SETEX operation.
It'll work fine unless you want to take advantage of using HGETALL, HKEYS or HVALS on your hashmap myhash:
SETEX mynamespace:mykey 10 "myvalue"
mynamespace is not a hashmap here, it simply a prefix, but in most cases it works just as hashmaps do. The only difference is that there is no efficient way to tell which keys are stored in the given namespace or to get them all with a single command.

Autoincrement in Redis

I'm starting to use Redis, and I've run into the following problem.
I have a bunch of objects, let's say Messages in my system. Each time a new User connects, I do the following:
INCR some global variable, let's say g_message_id, and save INCR's return value (the current value of g_message_id).
LPUSH the new message (including the id and the actual message) into a list.
Other clients use the value of g_message_id to check if there are any new messages to get.
Problem is, one client could INCR the g_message_id, but not have time to LPUSH the message before another client tries to read it, assuming that there is a new message.
In other words, I'm looking for a way to do the equivalent of adding rows in SQL, and having an auto-incremented index to work with.
Notes:
I can't use the list indexes, since I often have to delete parts of the list, making it invalid.
My situation in reality is a bit more complex, this is a simpler version.
Current solution:
The best solution I've come up with and what I plan to do is use WATCH and Transactions to try and perform an "autoincrement" myself.
But this is such a common use-case in Redis that I'm surprised there is not existing answer for it, so I'm worried I'm doing something wrong.
If I'm reading correctly, you are using g_message_id both as an id sequence and as a flag to indicate new message(s) are available. One option is to split this into two variables: one to assign message identifiers and the other as a flag to signal to clients that a new message is available.
Clients can then compare the current / prior value of g_new_message_flag to know when new messages are available:
> INCR g_message_id
(integer) 123
# construct the message with id=123 in code
> MULTI
OK
> INCR g_new_message_flag
QUEUED
> LPUSH g_msg_queue "{\"id\": 123, \"msg\": \"hey\"}"
QUEUED
> EXEC
Possible alternative, if your clients can support it: you might want to look into the
Redis publish/subscribe commands, e.g. cients could publish notifications of new messages and subscribe to one or more message channels to receive notifications. You could keep the g_msg_queue to maintain a backlog of N messages for new clients, if necessary.
Update based on comment: If you want each client to detect there are available messages, pop all that are available, and zero out the list, one option is to use a transaction to read the list:
# assuming the message queue contains "123", "456", "789"..
# a client detects there are new messages, then runs this:
> WATCH g_msg_queue
OK
> LRANGE g_msg_queue 0 100000
QUEUED
> DEL g_msg_queue
QUEUED
> EXEC
1) 1) "789"
2) "456"
3) "123"
2) (integer) 1
Update 2: Given the new information, here's what I would do:
Have your writer clients use RPUSH to append new messages to the list. This lets the reader clients start at 0 and iterate forward over the list to get new messages.
Readers need to only remember the index of the last message they fetched from the list.
Readers watch g_new_message_flag to know when to fetch from the list.
Each reader client will then use "LRANGE list index limit" to fetch the new messages. Suppose a reader client has seen a total of 5 messages, it would run "LRANGE g_msg_queue 5 15" to get the next 10 messages. Suppose 3 are returned, so it remembers the index 8. You can make the limit as large as you want, and can walk through the list in small batches.
The reaper client should set a WATCH on the list and delete it inside a transaction, aborting if any client is concurrently reading from it.
When a reader client tries LRANGE and gets 0 messages it can assume the list has been truncated and reset its index to 0.
Do you really need unique sequential IDs? You can use UUIDs for uniqueness and timestamps to check for new messages. If you keep the clocks on all your servers properly synchronized then timestamps with a one second resolution should work just fine.
If you really do need unique sequential IDs then you'll probably have to set up a Flickr style ticket server to properly manage the central list of IDs. This would, essentially, move your g_message_id into a database with proper transaction handling.
You can simulate auto-incrementing a unique key for new rows. Simply use DBSIZE to get the current number of rows, then in your code, increment that number by 1, and use that number as the key for the new row. It's simple and atomic.