Storing custom .Net objects in Azure Redis Cache with StackExchange.Redis

Question

We're implementing StackExchange.Redis for storing all information regarding three e-commerce sites (aproximately 18,500 products). The information is stored in a SQL Server database, mapped to custom objects and then added in an Azure Redis Cache using this key naming convention:

urn:products:{0}:{1}

(where 0 is the store identifier and 1 is the product identifier). I read Where are KEYS, SCAN, FLUSHDB etc? and was able to get keys matching the urn:products:{0} by pattern. The issue that we´re facing is that our project involves a lot of GetAllProducts List < Products > , GetAllCategories List < Categories > and then used by LINQ functions.

Based on this:

• I tried storing all products (list of custom objects) in one key ( urn:products:all ), but that approach generated timeouts in Azure Redis Cache. Is this method the suggested one? Or is it preferable to store each product in separate keys?
• I don't think that is correct to loop each of the keys to get each value. Is it possible to get a collection of keys/values by pattern?
• I also read HASHES, however I don't think that they help in our requirement.

Answer 1

I'm wondering your approach to call tons of records at once. I recommend to slice them no more than a thousand records.

Redis only has very limited feature, so your requirement may not be fulfilled. Redis is good for cache or simple key-value getter and setter. For that, you may consider other memory-based databases such as MongoDB.

In your case, Redis Set is the best approach to combine or substract with given conditions, or Hash is for property-based object storing. Whatever approach you choose, you will use two or more datatypes because Redis datatypes are not so versatile.

RedisCookbook describes good example.

• http://www.rediscookbook.org/implement_tags_and_search_them.html
• http://www.rediscookbook.org/introduction_to_storing_objects.html