Redis Cheat Sheet

Redis commands for strings, lists, sets, hashes, sorted sets, pub/sub, and expiration, covering the core in-memory data structure operations.

2 PagesIntermediateFeb 28, 2026

Strings & Expiry

Basic key/value operations and TTLs.

bash

redis-cliSET key "value"GET keySETEX key 60 "value"     # set with 60s expiryINCR counterEXPIRE key 30            # set TTL in secondsTTL key                  # seconds remaining, -1 = no expiryDEL key

Data Structures

Lists, sets, hashes, and sorted sets.

bash

LPUSH mylist "a" "b"          # listLRANGE mylist 0 -1SADD myset "a" "b"            # setSMEMBERS mysetHSET user:1 name "Alice" age 30   # hashHGETALL user:1ZADD leaderboard 100 "alice"      # sorted setZRANGE leaderboard 0 -1 WITHSCORES

Common Commands

Frequently used commands beyond basic gets/sets.

KEYS pattern- finds keys matching a pattern; blocks the server, avoid in production
SCAN cursor- cursor-based, non-blocking key iteration; production-safe alternative to KEYS
EXPIRE / PERSIST- set or remove a key's time-to-live
MULTI / EXEC- queues commands and executes them atomically as a transaction
PUBLISH / SUBSCRIBE- publish/subscribe messaging between clients
FLUSHDB- deletes every key in the currently selected database

Pub/Sub & Pipelines

Messaging and batching commands from a client.

python

# Pub/Sub (redis-cli)# SUBSCRIBE channel1# PUBLISH channel1 "hello"# Pipeline example (redis-py)import redisr = redis.Redis()pipe = r.pipeline()pipe.set('a', 1)pipe.incr('a')results = pipe.execute()   # batches commands in one round trip

Pro Tip

Never run the KEYS command against a production instance — it scans the entire keyspace and blocks the single-threaded event loop; use SCAN instead for safe, incremental iteration.

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