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Getting Started with RedisInsight

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Author:
Ajeet Raina, Former Developer Growth Manager at Redis

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RedisInsight is a visual tool that lets you do both GUI- and CLI-based interactions with your Redis database, and so much more when developing your Redis based application. It is a fully-featured pure Desktop GUI client that provides capabilities to design, develop and optimize your Redis application. It works with any cloud provider as long as you run it on a host with network access to your cloud-based Redis server. It makes it easy to discover cloud databases and configure connection details with a single click. It allows you to automatically add Redis Enterprise Software and Redis Enterprise Cloud databases.

What's New in RedisInsight v2.0?​

RedisInsight v2.0 is a complete product rewrite based on a new tech stack comprising of Electron, Monaco Editor and NodeJS. This version contains a number of must-have and most-used capabilities from previous releases, plus a number of differentiators and delighters. You can run the application locally along with your favorite IDE, and it remains cross-platform, supported on Linux, Windows, and MacOS.

Starting with RedisInsight v2.0 release, the code is open source and publicly available over on GitHub. Below are the list of new features introduced with this latest release:

  • Workbench - An advanced command line interface with intelligent command auto-complete and complex data visualizations
  • Ability to write and render your own data visualizations within Workbench
  • Built-in click-through Redis Guides available
  • Support for Light and Dark themes
  • Enhanced user experience with Browser

Getting Started​

Using MacOS​

To install RedisInsight on MacOS, the easiest way is to install Redis Stack. Make sure that you have Homebrew installed before starting on the installation instructions below.

Step 1. Install Redis Stack using Homebrew​

First, tap the Redis Stack Homebrew tap and then run brew install as shown below:

 brew tap redis-stack/redis-stack
 brew install --cask redis-stack

This will install all Redis and Redis Stack binaries. How you run these binaries depends on whether you already have Redis installed on your system.

 ==> Installing Cask redis-stack-redisinsight
 ==> Moving App 'RedisInsight-preview.app' to '/Applications/RedisInsight-preview.app'
 🍺  redis-stack-redisinsight was successfully installed!
 ==> Installing Cask redis-stack
 🍺  redis-stack was successfully installed!
tip

If this is the first time you’ve installed Redis on your system, then all Redis Stack binaries be installed and accessible on your path. On M1 Macs, this assumes that /opt/homebrew/bin is in your path. On Intel-based Macs, /usr/local/bin should be in the path.

To check this, run:

 echo $PATH

Then, confirm that the output contains /opt/homebrew/bin (M1 Mac) or /usr/local/bin (Intel Mac). If these directories are not in the output, see the “Existing Redis installation” instructions below.

Start Redis Stack Server​

You can now start Redis Stack Server as follows:

 redis-stack-server

Existing Redis installation​

If you have an existing Redis installation on your system, then you’ll need to modify your path to ensure that you’re using the latest Redis Stack binaries.

Open the file ~/.bashrc or ~/zshrc (depending on your shell), and add the following lines.

  export PATH=/usr/local/Caskroom/redis-stack-server/<VERSION>/bin:$PATH

Go to Applications and click "RedisInsight-v2" to bring up the Redis Desktop GUI tool.

Step 2. Add Redis database​

access redisinsight

Step 3. Enter Redis database details​

Add the local Redis database endpoint and port.

access redisinsight

Step 5. Redis for time series​

Redis Stack provides you with a native time series data structure. Let's see how a time series might be useful in our bike shop.

As we have multiple physical shops too, alongside our online shop, it could be helpful to have an overview of the sales volume. We will create one time series per shop tracking the total amount of all sales. In addition, we will mark the time series with the appropriate region label, east or west. This kind of representation will allow us to easily query bike sales performance per certain time periods, per shop, per region or across all shops.

Click "Guides" icon(just below the key) in the left sidebar and choose "Redis for the time series" for this demonstration. i

redis for timeseries

Step 6. Create time series per shop​

 TS.CREATE bike_sales_1 DUPLICATE_POLICY SUM LABELS region east compacted no
 TS.CREATE bike_sales_2 DUPLICATE_POLICY SUM LABELS region east compacted no
 TS.CREATE bike_sales_3 DUPLICATE_POLICY SUM LABELS region west compacted no
 TS.CREATE bike_sales_4 DUPLICATE_POLICY SUM LABELS region west compacted no
 TS.CREATE bike_sales_5 DUPLICATE_POLICY SUM LABELS region west compacted no

As shown in the following query, we make the shop id (1,2,3,4,5) a part of the time series name. You might also notice the DUPLICATE_POLICY SUM argument; this describes what should be done when two events in the same time series share the same timestamp: In this case, it would mean that two sales happened at exactly the same time, so the resulting value should be a sum of the two sales amounts.

Since the metrics are collected with a millisecond timestamp, we can compact our time series into sales per hour:

create time series per shop

Step 7. Running the query​

execute the query

Step 8. Time series compaction​

RedisTimeSeries supports downsampling with the following aggregations: avg, sum, min, max, range, count, first and last. If you want to keep all of your raw data points indefinitely, your data set grows linearly over time. However, if your use case allows you to have less fine-grained data further back in time, downsampling can be applied. This allows you to keep fewer historical data points by aggregating raw data for a given time window using a given aggregation function.

Example:​

 TS.CREATERULE bike_sales_5 bike_sales_5_per_day AGGREGATION sum 86400000

time series compaction

Overview of RedisInsight Workbench​

With the new RedisInsight v2.0, a Workbench has been introduced. Workbench is basically an advanced command-line interface that lets you run commands against your Redis server. Workbench editor allows comments, multi-line formatting and multi-command execution. It is an Intelligent Redis command auto-complete and syntax highlighting with support for RediSearch, RedisJSON, RedisGraph, RedisTimeSeries, RedisGears, RedisAI, RedisBloom. It allows rendering custom data visualization per Redis command using externally developed plugins.

You can locate the workbench on the left sidebar of RedisInsight dashboard UI. It displays a built-in click-through guides for Redis capabilities. You can also see a number of metrics always on display within the database workspace. These metrics get updated every 5 seconds. The metrics include CPU, number of keys, commands/sec, network input, network output, total memory, number of connected clients.

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Check out the reference section to learn more about the new RedisInsight v2.0 features.

Accessing the CLI​

The new RedisInsight v2.0 comes with a command-line interface with enhanced type-ahead command help. It includes an embedded command helper where you can filter and search for Redis commands. Click on "CLI" option to open CLI window:

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Try executing Redis commands as shown below:

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RedisInsight allows you to browse, filter and visualize key-value Redis data structures. It support CRUD operation for Lists, Hashes, Strings, Sets, Sorted Sets etc. In our next tutorial, we will explore the browser tool in more details.

References​