Installing Redis

curl -O http://redis.googlecode.com/files/redis-2.2.2.tar.gz
tar xzf redis-2.2.2.tar.gz
cd redis-2.2.2
make
cp src/redis-server src/redis-cli /usr/bin

Redis Server

If you want to use redis-server locally,  just run the following, it will use the default Redis config file:

redis-server

If you want to run it on a server you want to use your own config file:

redis-server /path/to/redis.conf

Redis and Rails

Now we have Redis installed and running, we want to use it with rails.

Firstly, add redis-rb to the Gemfile:

gem 'redis', '2.1.1' (or any latest version)

Then install the gem:

bundle install

Lastly, create initializer in config/initializers/redis.rb with following:

$redis = Redis.new(:host => 'localhost', :port => 6379)

It will create an instance of Redis client, connects to localhost:6379 (which is default).

To check if its working fine, let's use rails console:

> $redis
=> #<Redis client v2.1.1 connected to redis://localhost:6379/0 (Redis v2.2.2)> 
> $redis.set('key', 'value')
=> "OK" 
> $redis.get('key')
=> "value"