Go and Redis

Author:

Ajeet Raina, Developer Growth Manager at Redis

Find tutorials, examples and technical articles that will help you to develop with Redis and Golang.

Getting Started#

Golang community has built many client libraries that you can find here. For your first steps with Golang and Redis, this article will show how to use the recommended library: redigo.

Redigo
Go-Redis

The redigo library is located in the https://github.com/gomodule/redigo that you must import in your application.

Step 1. Import the `redigo` module#

go get github.com/gomodule/redigo/redis

 import (
    "fmt"
    "context"
    "github.com/gomodule/redigo/redis"
 )

Step 2. Create a connection pool#

 func newPool() *redis.Pool {
     return &redis.Pool{
        MaxIdle: 80,
        MaxActive: 12000,
        Dial: func() (redis.Conn, error) {
              c, err := redis.Dial("tcp", ":6379")
              if err != nil {
                  panic(err.Error())
              }
              return c, err
          },
      }
  }

Step 3. Write your application code#

 package main

 import (
     "fmt"

     "github.com/gomodule/redigo/redis"
 )

 var pool = newPool()

 func main() {

     client := pool.Get()
     defer client.Close()

     _, err := client.Do("SET", "mykey", "Hello from redigo!")
     if err != nil {
         panic(err)
     }

     value, err := client.Do("GET", "mykey")
     if err != nil {
         panic(err)
     }

     fmt.Printf("%s \n", value)

     _, err = client.Do("ZADD", "vehicles", 4, "car")
     if err != nil {
         panic(err)
     }
     _, err = client.Do("ZADD", "vehicles", 2, "bike")
     if err != nil {
         panic(err)
     }

     vehicles, err := client.Do("ZRANGE", "vehicles", 0, -1, "WITHSCORES")
     if err != nil {
         panic(err)
     }  
     fmt.Printf("%s \n", vehicles)

     
 }

 func newPool() *redis.Pool {
     return &redis.Pool{
         MaxIdle: 80,
         MaxActive: 12000,
         Dial: func() (redis.Conn, error) {
             c, err := redis.Dial("tcp", ":6379")
             if err != nil {
                 panic(err.Error())
             }
             return c, err
         },
     }
 }    

Find more information about Golang & Redis connections in the "Redis Connect".

Go-redis is a type-safe, Redis client library for Go with support for features like Pub/Sub, sentinel, and pipelining.It is a Redis client able to support a Redis cluster and is designed to store and update slot info automatically with a cluster change. Below are the attractive features of Go-redis:

Go-redis has pooling capabilities.(Pools allow you to safely handle go-routines, auto reconnect if any error occurs)
It supports both standard, OSS cluster AIP, and Sentinel
Comes with Auto reconnects / Auto-rediscovers cluster slots on error/migration
Support instrumentations
Allows for a custom dialer (this is useful for Enterprise)
Support for Redis Sentinel

The go-redis library is located in the https://github.com/go-redis/redis that you must import in your application. Do check Redis Cache Library for Golang

Step 1. Run a Redis server#

Redis is an open source, in-memory, key-value data store most commonly used as a primary database, cache, message broker, and queue. Redis delivers sub-millisecond response times, enabling fast and powerful real-time applications in industries such as gaming, fintech, ad-tech, social media, healthcare, and IoT. You can run a Redis database directly over your local mac os or in a container. If you have Docker installed in your sytem, type the following command:

 docker run -d -p 6379:6379 redislabs/redismod

You can connect to Redis server using the redis-cli command like this:

redis-cli

The above command will make a connection to the Redis server. It will then present a prompt that allows you to run Redis commands.

Step 2. Initialise the Go Module#

In order to connect to the Redis instance and return some data value, first you need to initialize the Go module as shown:

go mod init github.com/my/repo

Step 3. Install redis/v8#

go get github.com/go-redis/redis/v8

Step 4. Create a main.go file#

Let us create a main.go file and write the following code to check for your Redis instance connection

 package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "github.com/go-redis/redis"
)

func main() {
    fmt.Println("Testing Golang Redis")

    client := redis.NewClient(&redis.Options{
        Addr: "localhost:6379",
        Password: "",
        DB: 0,
    })

    pong, err := client.Ping().Result()
    fmt.Println(pong, err)

 }

Step 5. Begin the compilation#

go run main.go

By now, the Go application should successfully connect to the Redis instance and return data value (a successful "PONG" response).

Redis Launchpad#

Redis Launchpad is like an “App Store” for Redis sample apps. You can easily find apps for your preferred frameworks and languages. Check out a few of these apps below, or click here to access the complete list.