Question

Basic question: Using Node.js I would like to get all the keys in my redis db. My redis db looks like this when I call keys *;

1. aXF
2. x9U
3. lOk

So each record I have, has a unique key, generated as a random string. Now I would like to call something like foreach(key in Redis) and get all keys in the redis. Would it be possible to accomplish a “SELECT * FROM Redis”-like query with Node.js & Redis

Answer 1

Sure, you’ll need to install the redis module for nodejs which can be found at https://github.com/redis/node-redis.

npm install redis

Then you would do:

var redis = require('redis'),
    client = redis.createClient();

client.keys('*', function (err, keys) {
  if (err) return console.log(err);
   
  for(var i = 0, len = keys.length; i < len; i++) {
    console.log(keys[i]);
  }
});        

Generally speaking you won’t want to always return all of the keys (performance will be bad for larger data sets), but this will work if you are just testing things out. There is even a nice warning in the Redis documentation:

Warning: consider KEYS as a command that should only be used in
production environments with extreme care. It may ruin performance
when it is executed against large databases. This command is intended
for debugging and special operations, such as changing your keyspace
layout. Don’t use KEYS in your regular application code. If you’re
looking for a way to find keys in a subset of your keyspace, consider
using sets.