Redis

Redis is an open source, in-memory data structure store. You can use it as a database and a message broker.

RudderStack stores all traits of your user as a Redis hash, allowing you to access user profiles in real-time.

Note that:

• This integration only accepts Identify calls. RudderStack ignores all other event types.
• It is highly recommended that you keep your Redis instance within a private network and make it accessible to RudderStack.

Find the open source transformer code for this destination in the GitHub repository.

Getting started

1. From your RudderStack dashboard, add the source. Then, from the list of destinations, select Redis.
2. Assign a name to the destination and click Continue.

Connection settings

To successfully configure Redis as a destination, you will need to configure the following settings:

• Address: Enter the address of your Redis instance.
• Password: Enter the password for your Redis instance.
• Database: Enter the database name of your Redis instance where RudderStack should store the user traits. You can use this setting to configure a different database in your Redis instance.
• Cluster Mode: Enable this setting if you’re connecting to a Redis cluster within a multi-node RudderStack setup.

Note that if you enable Cluster Mode:

• You need to specify multiple host addresses in a comma separated format in the Address field.
• RudderStack automatically disables the Database option.

• Secure: Enable this setting to secure the TLS communication between RudderStack Redis client and your Redis server.
  • Skip verify: Enable this option to skip the client’s verification of the server’s certificate chain and host name. In this mode, TLS is susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. Use this option only for testing.
  • CA certificate: Enter the certificate which needs to be verified while establishing a secure connection. Skip this setting if the Root CA of your server can be verified with any client, for example, Elasticache.
• Prefix: By default, RudderStack stores user traits with the key user:<user_id>. You can specify an extra prefix to distinguish all RudderStack-stored keys.
• Consent management provider: Configure the consent management settings for the specified source by choosing the consent management provider from the dropdown. If you choose Custom, make sure to pass the custom consent data to SDK.

Identify

You can use the identify call to identify a visiting user and associate them to their actions. It also lets you record the traits about them like their name, email address, etc.

RudderStack stores the user traits in the Redis instance configured in the connection settings. You can access the latest user traits by querying Redis for the key user:<user_id>.

A sample identify call is shown below:

// Identify a user with name and title as traits

rudderanalytics.identify("1hKOmRA4GRlm", {
  name: "Alex Keener",
  title: "CEO",
})

userId is a required field for RudderStack to successfully send the identify events to Redis.

The following snippet highlights how it is stored in Redis:

// redis-cli
redis> HGETALL user:1hKOmRA4GRlm
1) "name"
2) "Alex Keener"
3) "title"
4) "CEO"

Nested properties

If your user traits have nested properties, RudderStack flattens them with . as the separator.

Consider the following event:

// Identify a user with location as a trait

rudderanalytics.identify("1hKOmRA4GRlm", {
  location: {
    state: "Texas",
    city: "Austin",
  },
})

RudderStack flattens the properties as follows:

// redis-cli
redis> HGETALL user:1hKOmRA4GRlm
1) "location.state"
2) "Texas"
3) "location.city"
4) "Austin"

Custom prefix

If you specify a prefix while setting up your Redis destination, RudderStack uses it to prefix all the keys.

For example, if you specify the prefix rudderstack in the RudderStack dashboard setting and send the following call:

// Identify a user with name and title as traits

rudderanalytics.identify("1hKOmRA4GRlm", {
  age: 23,
})

The corresponding Redis CLI output is prefixed with rudderstack as shown below:

// redis-cli
redis> HGETALL rudderstack:user:1hKOmRA4GRlm
1) "age"
2) 23

FAQ

How do I set up Redis on Docker with TLS support?

To enable a TLS endpoint for accessing Redis, run a redis-stunnel container with a link to your Redis container and expose the TLS port. For more details, see redis-stunnel usage.

• Set Common Name to localhost while generating the CA certificate and server certificates.
• Set the TLS endpoint of the redis-stunnel container as the Address in your destination settings.

For example, see the following Redis destination settings:

Here, 127.0.0.1:6380 is the address used while running containers locally with default values. You can specify the contents of the generated ca.pem file in the CA certificate field.

Questions? Contact us by email or on Slack