Check out my previous post about Redis.

In this post I build a very simple example of using Redis with Clojure. I will be using a client library for Redis written in Clojure called redis-clojure. You could also use the java library, to see complete list of supported languages go to this link.

So here we go..

1. Create a simple clojure project (I personally use Leinigen), to create a new project execute ‘lein new com.dev/try-redis‘ this will create an entire project structure.
2. Edit the project.clj file under the newly created project directory and add a new dependency for redis-clojure, the file should look close to this after you are done.

   (defproject com.dev/try-redis "1.0.0-SNAPSHOT"
     :description "simple example of using redis"
     :dependencies [[org.clojure/clojure "1.1.0"]
                    [org.clojure/clojure-contrib "1.1.0"]
                    [redis-clojure "1.0.3-SNAPSHOT"]]
     :dev-dependencies [[swank-clojure "1.2.1"]])
   

3. run ‘lein deps‘ so that all the dependencies are downloaded.
4. Edit the file core.clj under the directory try-redis/src/com/dev/try_redis, and add the following.

   (ns com.dev.try-redis.core
     (:require redis))
   
   (defn test-redis []
        (redis/with-server {:host "127.0.0.1" :port 6379 :db 0}
          (do
            (redis/set "foo" "bar")
            (println (redis/get "foo")))))
   
   

   On lines 7 and 8 we are setting key value pair and retriving the value.

5. Start the redis server ‘./redis-server redis.conf‘
6. Now we are ready to execute the script, there are 2 ways to do this.
   1. The easiest way is just going to your porject root directory and run ‘lein repl‘ (see the below oouput) which opens a read evaluate loop and once you have that run ‘(load-file “src/com/dev/try_redis/core.clj”)‘ to load the file and then you can run ‘(com.dev.try-redis.core/test-redis)‘ to run the example.
   2. I personally use emacs/slime, but for this option you need to have emacs and slime-clojure installed (See my emacs page). Run ‘lein swank‘ in the project directory and then in your emacs connect to it using ‘M-x slime-connect‘, this will open up a repl, do a C-c C-k to compile the file and in the repl you can execute using ‘(com.dev.try-redis.core/test-redis)’

If everything has gone will you should see this output.

Clojure 1.1.0
user=> (load-file "src/com/dev/try_redis/core.clj")
#'com.dev.try-redis.core/test-redis
user=> (com.dev.try-redis.core/test-redis)         
bar
nil
user=>