REDIS - How can I query keys and get their values in one query? - redis

Question

Using keys I can query the keys as you can see below:
redis> set popo "pepe"
OK
redis> set coco "kansas"
OK
redis> set cool "rock"
OK
redis> set cool2 "punk"
OK
redis> keys *co*
1) "cool2"
2) "coco"
3) "cool"
redis> keys *ol*
1) "cool2"
2) "cool"
Is there any way to get the values instead of the keys? Something like: mget (keys *ol*)

Answer 1

NOTICE: As others have mentioned, along with myself in the comments on the original question, in production environments KEYS should be avoided. If you're just running queries on your own box and hacking something together, go for it. Otherwise, question if REDIS makes sense for your particular application, and if you really need to do this - if so, impose limits and avoid large blocking calls, such as KEYS. (For help with this, see 2015 Edit, below.)
My laptop isn't readily available right now to test this, but from what I can tell there isn't any native commands that would allow you to use a pattern in that way. If you want to do it all within redis, you might have to use EVAL to chain the commands:
eval "return redis.call('MGET', unpack(redis.call('KEYS', KEYS[1])))" 1 "*co*"
(Replacing the *co* at the end with whatever pattern you're searching for.)
http://redis.io/commands/eval
Note: This runs the string as a Lua script - I haven't dove much into it, so I don't know if it sanitizes the input in any way. Before you use it (especially if you intend to with any user input) test injecting further redis.call functions in and see if it evaluates those too. If it does, then be careful about it.
Edit: Actually, this should be safe because neither redis nor it's lua evaluation allows escaping the containing string: http://redis.io/topics/security
2015 Edit: Since my original post, REDIS has released 2.8, which includes the SCAN command, which is a better fit for this type of functionality. It will not work for this exact question, which requests a one-liner command, but it's better for all reasonable constraints / environments.
Details about SCAN can be read at http://redis.io/commands/scan .
To use this, essentially you iterate over your data set using something like scan ${cursor} MATCH ${query} COUNT ${maxPageSize} (e.g. scan 0 MATCH *co* COUNT 500). Here, cursor should always be initialized as 0.
This returns two things: first is a new cursor value that you can use to get the next set of elements, and second is a collection of elements matching your query. You just keep updating cursor, calling this query until cursor is 0 again (meaning you've iterated over everything), and push the found elements into a collection.
I know SCAN sounds like a lot more work, but I implore you, please use a solution like this instead of KEYS for anything important.