Redis Data Structures Tutorial

Redis Data Structure

In a typical key:value database we set a string for both the keys and values. Redis allows us to use more complex data structures such as hashes, lists and sets.

As an example, let’s consider a database of employees. An employee may need to have multiple values associated with their key, like Name, Department etc.

We could structure our database with single key:value pairs and find ways to establish an association between the different values of a single employee.

emp-1-fname "John"
emp-1-lname "Doe"
emp-1-department "IT"
emp-1-birthday "25 Jul"

However, this can easily lead to confusion and mistakes. Instead what we want is a single employee key with multiple values associated with it.

emp-1
  fname "Jane"
  lname "Doe"
  department "Legal"
  birthday "2 Sep"

More complex data structures, like a hashmap, allows us to easily do this.