Caching, Queues, and Real-Time Systems

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Redis is easy to start with — and surprisingly easy to misuse.

A cache without an invalidation plan serves stale prices. A list used as a queue loses jobs when a worker crashes. A lock without an expiry freezes the system; a lock with an expiry but no fencing token lets two workers think they both hold it. One oversized key stalls every other client. None of this shows up on a laptop. It shows up in production, under load.

This book shows you how experienced teams use Redis — step by step, with one realistic running example: Plattergo, a food-ordering and delivery platform with cached menus, order streams, live courier tracking, rate limits, and trending-dish leaderboards.

• 429 pages · 28 chapters + 4 appendices · practice exercises in every chapter
• Every data structure: strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, bitmaps, HyperLogLog, geo, and streams
• Caching patterns, TTLs, invalidation, stampedes, hot keys, eviction, and memory management
• Sessions, carts, client-side caching, and HTTP response caching
• Reliable queues, pub/sub, Redis Streams with consumer groups, retries, and dead letters
• Background jobs with idempotency, priorities, and scheduling
• Rate limiting, leaderboards, presence, live tracking, and geospatial search
• Distributed locks done carefully — including fencing tokens and the Redlock debate
• WebSockets and Server-Sent Events powered by Redis
• Transactions, pipelining, Lua, Redis Functions, JSON, search, and vector similarity
• Persistence, replication, Sentinel, Cluster, security, and managed services
• Examples in redis-cli and Python; notes on Redis 7/8, licensing, and Valkey

Table Of Contents

Part I — Redis Foundations

• Ch 1 · Why Redis: In-Memory Data Structures for Real Systems
• Ch 2 · Setting Up: Redis, Valkey, redis-cli, Docker, and Client Libraries
• Ch 3 · Keys, Strings, and Expiration: The Core Model
• Ch 4 · Hashes, Lists, and Sets
• Ch 5 · Sorted Sets, Bitmaps, HyperLogLog, and Geospatial Indexes

Part II — Caching

• Ch 6 · Caching Fundamentals: Cache-Aside, Read-Through, Write-Through, and Write-Behind
• Ch 7 · Invalidation, TTLs, and Consistency with the Database
• Ch 8 · Stampedes, Hot Keys, Negative Caching, and Cache Warming
• Ch 9 · Eviction Policies and Memory Management
• Ch 10 · Sessions, Carts, Client-Side Caching, and HTTP Response Caching

Part III — Queues, Streams, and Messaging

• Ch 11 · Lists as Queues: Blocking Pops, Reliable Queues, and Delayed Jobs
• Ch 12 · Pub/Sub, Sharded Pub/Sub, and Keyspace Notifications
• Ch 13 · Redis Streams I: Producers, Consumers, and Consumer Groups
• Ch 14 · Redis Streams II: Acknowledgments, Retries, Dead Letters, and Trimming
• Ch 15 · Background Jobs in Practice: Idempotency, Priorities, Scheduling, and Job Libraries

Part IV — Real-Time Features

• Ch 16 · Rate Limiting: Fixed Window, Sliding Window, and Token Bucket
• Ch 17 · Leaderboards, Counters, and Real-Time Analytics
• Ch 18 · Presence, Live Tracking, and Geospatial Queries
• Ch 19 · Distributed Locks, Semaphores, and Coordination
• Ch 20 · Pushing Real-Time Updates to Clients: WebSockets and Server-Sent Events with Redis

Part V — Advanced Redis

• Ch 21 · Transactions, Pipelining, and Atomicity
• Ch 22 · Lua Scripting and Redis Functions
• Ch 23 · Beyond Core Types: JSON, Search, and Vector Similarity
• Ch 24 · Data Modeling in Redis: Key Design, Secondary Indexes, and Memory Efficiency
• Ch 25 · Performance: Latency, Big Keys, the Slow Log, and Load Testing Your Workload

Part VI — Production

• Ch 26 · Persistence, Replication, and High Availability with Sentinel
• Ch 27 · Redis Cluster, Scaling, Security, and Managed Services
• Ch 28 · Case Study: Running Plattergo's Real-Time Platform in Production

Appendices

• App A · Redis Command Cheat Sheet
• App B · Templates and Command Reference
• App C · Production Checklist
• App D · Glossary

WHO IT IS FOR
Backend and full-stack developers adding caching, background jobs, rate limits, or live features; engineers who already use Redis and want solid answers on invalidation, reliable queues, streams, locks, and memory; and platform engineers responsible for running Redis safely.

FORMAT
PDF (A4), 429 pages, English, clickable table of contents and PDF bookmarks. 1st Edition, 2026. Published by thenexbooks.

Redis is a registered trademark of Redis Ltd. Any rights therein are reserved to Redis Ltd. Any use by thenexbooks is for referential purposes only and does not indicate any sponsorship, endorsement, or affiliation between Redis Ltd. and thenexbooks.

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