【Redis笔记】Redis Sorted sets

Redis Sorted sets —

Sorted sets are a data type which is similar to a mix between a Set and a Hash. Like sets, sorted sets are composed of unique, non-repeating string elements, so in some sense a sorted set is a set as well.

However while elements inside sets are not ordered, every element in a sorted set is associated with a floating point value, called the score (this is why the type is also similar to a hash, since every element is mapped to a value).

Moreover, elements in a sorted sets are taken in order (so they are not ordered on request, order is a peculiarity of the data structure used to represent sorted sets). They are ordered according to the following rule:

• If A and B are two elements with a different score, then A > B if A.score is > B.score.
• If A and B have exactly the same score, then A > B if the A string is lexicographically greater than the B string. A and B strings can’t be equal since sorted sets only have unique elements.

Let’s start with a simple example, adding a few selected hackers names as sorted set elements, with their year of birth as “score”.

> zadd hackers 1940 "Alan Kay"
(integer) 1
> zadd hackers 1957 "Sophie Wilson"
(integer 1)
> zadd hackers 1953 "Richard Stallman"
(integer) 1
> zadd hackers 1949 "Anita Borg"
(integer) 1
> zadd hackers 1965 "Yukihiro Matsumoto"
(integer) 1
> zadd hackers 1914 "Hedy Lamarr"
(integer) 1
> zadd hackers 1916 "Claude Shannon"
(integer) 1
> zadd hackers 1969 "Linus Torvalds"
(integer) 1
> zadd hackers 1912 "Alan Turing"
(integer) 1

As you can see ZADD is similar to SADD, but takes one additional argument (placed before the element to be added) which is the score. ZADD is also variadic, so you are free to specify multiple score-value pairs, even if this is not used in the example above.

With sorted sets it is trivial to return a list of hackers sorted by their birth year because actually they are already sorted.

Implementation note: Sorted sets are implemented via a dual-ported data structure containing both a skip list and a hash table, so every time we add an element Redis performs an O(log(N)) operation. That’s good, but when we ask for sorted elements Redis does not have to do any work at all, it’s already all sorted:

> zrange hackers 0 -1
1) "Alan Turing"
2) "Hedy Lamarr"
3) "Claude Shannon"
4) "Alan Kay"
5) "Anita Borg"
6) "Richard Stallman"
7) "Sophie Wilson"
8) "Yukihiro Matsumoto"
9) "Linus Torvalds"

Note: 0 and -1 means from element index 0 to the last element (-1 works here just as it does in the case of the LRANGEcommand).

What if I want to order them the opposite way, youngest to oldest? Use ZREVRANGE instead of ZRANGE:

> zrevrange hackers 0 -1
1) "Linus Torvalds"
2) "Yukihiro Matsumoto"
3) "Sophie Wilson"
4) "Richard Stallman"
5) "Anita Borg"
6) "Alan Kay"
7) "Claude Shannon"
8) "Hedy Lamarr"
9) "Alan Turing"

It is possible to return scores as well, using the WITHSCORES argument:

> zrange hackers 0 -1 withscores
1) "Alan Turing"
2) "1912"
3) "Hedy Lamarr"
4) "1914"
5) "Claude Shannon"
6) "1916"
7) "Alan Kay"
8) "1940"
9) "Anita Borg"
10) "1949"
11) "Richard Stallman"
12) "1953"
13) "Sophie Wilson"
14) "1957"
15) "Yukihiro Matsumoto"
16) "1965"
17) "Linus Torvalds"
18) "1969"

Operating on ranges

Sorted sets are more powerful than this. They can operate on ranges. Let’s get all the individuals that were born up to 1950 inclusive. We use the ZRANGEBYSCORE command to do it:

> zrangebyscore hackers -inf 1950
1) "Alan Turing"
2) "Hedy Lamarr"
3) "Claude Shannon"
4) "Alan Kay"
5) "Anita Borg"

We asked Redis to return all the elements with a score between negative infinity and 1950 (both extremes are included).

It’s also possible to remove ranges of elements. Let’s remove all the hackers born between 1940 and 1960 from the sorted set:

> zremrangebyscore hackers 1940 1960
(integer) 4

ZREMRANGEBYSCORE is perhaps not the best command name, but it can be very useful, and returns the number of removed elements.

Another extremely useful operation defined for sorted set elements is the get-rank operation. It is possible to ask what is the position of an element in the set of the ordered elements.

> zrank hackers "Anita Borg"
(integer) 4

The ZREVRANK command is also available in order to get the rank, considering the elements sorted a descending way.

Lexicographical scores

With recent versions of Redis 2.8, a new feature was introduced that allows getting ranges lexicographically, assuming elements in a sorted set are all inserted with the same identical score (elements are compared with the C memcmp function, so it is guaranteed that there is no collation, and every Redis instance will reply with the same output).

The main commands to operate with lexicographical ranges are ZRANGEBYLEX, ZREVRANGEBYLEX, ZREMRANGEBYLEX and ZLEXCOUNT.

For example, let’s add again our list of famous hackers, but this time use a score of zero for all the elements:

> zadd hackers 0 "Alan Kay" 0 "Sophie Wilson" 0 "Richard Stallman" 0
  "Anita Borg" 0 "Yukihiro Matsumoto" 0 "Hedy Lamarr" 0 "Claude Shannon"
  0 "Linus Torvalds" 0 "Alan Turing"

Because of the sorted sets ordering rules, they are already sorted lexicographically:

> zrange hackers 0 -1
1) "Alan Kay"
2) "Alan Turing"
3) "Anita Borg"
4) "Claude Shannon"
5) "Hedy Lamarr"
6) "Linus Torvalds"
7) "Richard Stallman"
8) "Sophie Wilson"
9) "Yukihiro Matsumoto"

Using ZRANGEBYLEX we can ask for lexicographical ranges:

> zrangebylex hackers [B [P
1) "Claude Shannon"
2) "Hedy Lamarr"
3) "Linus Torvalds"

Ranges can be inclusive or exclusive (depending on the first character), also string infinite and minus infinite are specified respectively with the + and - strings. See the documentation for more information.

This feature is important because it allows us to use sorted sets as a generic index. For example, if you want to index elements by a 128-bit unsigned integer argument, all you need to do is to add elements into a sorted set with the same score (for example 0) but with an 8 byte prefix consisting of the 128 bit number in big endian. Since numbers in big endian, when ordered lexicographically (in raw bytes order) are actually ordered numerically as well, you can ask for ranges in the 128 bit space, and get the element’s value discarding the prefix.

If you want to see the feature in the context of a more serious demo, check the Redis autocomplete demo.

Updating the score: leader boards

Just a final note about sorted sets before switching to the next topic. Sorted sets’ scores can be updated at any time. Just calling ZADD against an element already included in the sorted set will update its score (and position) with O(log(N)) time complexity. As such, sorted sets are suitable when there are tons of updates.

Because of this characteristic a common use case is leader boards. The typical application is a Facebook game where you combine the ability to take users sorted by their high score, plus the get-rank operation, in order to show the top-N users, and the user rank in the leader board (e.g., “you are the #4932 best score here”).