How To Include Redis In Your Application Architecture

Summary

The Redis database recently celebrated its 10th birthday. In that time it has earned a well-earned reputation for speed, reliability, and ease of use. Python developers are fortunate to have a well-built client in the form of redis-py to leverage it in their projects. In this episode Andy McCurdy and Dr. Christoph Zimmerman explain the ways that Redis can be used in your application architecture, how the Python client is built and maintained, and how to use it in your projects.

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• Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Andy McCurdy and Christoph Zimmerman about the Redis database, and some of the various ways that it is used by Python developers

Interview

• Introductions
• How did you get introduced to Python?
• Can you start by explaining what Redis is and how you got involved in the project?
• How does the redis-py project relate to the Redis database and what motivated you to create the Python client?
• What are some of the main use cases that Redis enables?
• Can you describe how Redis-py is implemented and some of the primitives that it provides for building applications on top of?
  • How do the release cycles of redis-py and the Redis database relate to each other?
  • How closely does redis-py match the features of the Redis database?
  • What are some of the convenience methods or features that you have added to make the client more Pythonic?
• Redis is often used as a key/value cache for web applications, in some cases replacing Memcached. What are the characteristics of Redis that lend themselves well to this purpose?
  • What are some edge cases or gotchas that users should be aware of?
• What are some of the common points of confusion or difficulties when storing and retrieving values in Redis?
• What have been some of the most challenging aspects of building and maintaining the Redis Python client?
• What are some of the anti-patterns that you have seen around how developers build on top of Redis?
• What are some of the most interesting or unexpected ways that you have seen Redis used?
• What are some of the least used or most misunderstood features of Redis that you think developers should know about?
• What are some of the recent and near-future improvements or features in Redis that you are most excited by?

Keep In Touch

• Andy
  • @andymccurdy on Twitter
  • andymccurdy on GitHub
• Christoph
  • chrisAtRedis on GitHub
  • LinkedIn

Picks

• Tobias
  • Rowan Atkinson
• Andy
  • The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
  • Dota 2 Auto Chess (Community Mod)
• Christoph
  • IPA Infused With Grapefruit Juice
  • redis-py
  • Selenium Python client
  • Daniel Suarez
    • Influx

Links

• redis-py
• Redis DB
• Redis Labs
• PHP
• Django
• Reflective Operating System Architectures
• TCL
• Perl
• Linux
• Memcached
• NextCloud
• C programming language
• uWSGI
• Flask
• Gevent
• PyPy
• re-json
• redis-graph
• Redis-search
• MongoDB
• Bloom Filter
• hiredis
• Redis Sentinel HA plugin
• Lua programming language
• OpenWRT
• LuCI
• MicroPython
  • Podcast Episode

The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA