Run and operate Redis

The service

docker-compose.yml defines a redis service (redis:7-alpine). It publishes no port: it is reachable only inside the Docker network, as the host redis. The app, queue and scheduler services wait for it to be healthy.

• Append-only persistence (redis-data volume), so queued jobs and sessions survive docker compose down.
• maxmemory 256mb with volatile-lru: only keys with a TTL (cache entries, sessions) are ever evicted, never the queue lists.
• REDIS_PASSWORD is optional. Unset, empty or null means no password.

Environment variables

Set these in Doppler (or .env when you do not use Doppler):

REDIS_CLIENT=phpredis
REDIS_HOST=redis
REDIS_PORT=6379
REDIS_PASSWORD=null

REDIS_HOST=redis is the Docker service name; use 127.0.0.1 when you run php artisan outside Docker. After changing variables, restart the stack so the containers pick them up:

make down
make up-d

Turn Redis on, one driver at a time

Nothing uses Redis until you switch the drivers. Do it in this order and restart the stack after each change:

CACHE_STORE=redis
SESSION_DRIVER=redis
QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis

• SESSION_DRIVER=redis signs everybody out (old sessions stay in SQLite).
• QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis stops reading the jobs table: let it drain first.
• To go back, set the variable back to database and restart.

Look inside

docker compose exec redis redis-cli info keyspace
docker compose exec redis redis-cli --scan | head

Sessions live in database 0 and the cache in database 1 (REDIS_CACHE_DB). To empty the cache only (leaves sessions and the queue):

docker compose exec redis redis-cli -n 1 flushdb

Never flushall on a shared instance: it signs everyone out and drops queued jobs.

Tests

phpunit.xml forces CACHE_STORE=array, SESSION_DRIVER=array and QUEUE_CONNECTION=sync, so the test suite never touches Redis.