Aliases

Aliases let you create alternative names for your search indices. This is useful for zero-downtime reindexing — you can build a new index, then atomically swap the alias to point to it.

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Adding an Alias

The SEARCH.ALIASADD command creates a new alias or updates an existing alias to point to a different index.

Returns 1 if a new alias was created, or 2 if an existing alias was updated to point to a new index.

TypeScript

// Top-level: create or update an alias
const result = await redis.search.alias.add({
  indexName: "products-v2",
  alias: "products",
});

// Via index method
const result2 = await index.addAlias({ alias: "products" });

Python

# Top-level: create or update an alias
result = redis.search.alias.add(index_name="products-v2", alias="products")

# Via index method
result = index.add_alias(alias="products")

Redis CLI

# Create or update an alias
SEARCH.ALIASADD products products-v2

A common pattern is to use aliases for zero-downtime reindexing:

TypeScript

// 1. Create a new index with updated schema
const productsV2 = await redis.search.createIndex({
  name: "products-v2",
  dataType: "json",
  prefix: "product:",
  schema,
});

// 2. Wait for indexing to complete
await productsV2.waitIndexing();

// 3. Swap the alias to point to the new index
await redis.search.alias.add({
  indexName: "products-v2",
  alias: "products",
});

// 4. Drop the old index
const oldIndex = redis.search.index({ name: "products-v1" });
await oldIndex.drop();

Python

# 1. Create a new index with updated schema
products_v2 = redis.search.create_index(
    name="products-v2",
    data_type="json",
    prefix="product:",
    schema=schema,
)

# 2. Wait for indexing to complete
products_v2.wait_indexing()

# 3. Swap the alias to point to the new index
redis.search.alias.add(index_name="products-v2", alias="products")

# 4. Drop the old index
old_index = redis.search.index(name="products-v1")
old_index.drop()

Redis CLI

# 1. Create new index
SEARCH.CREATE products-v2 ON JSON PREFIX 1 product: SCHEMA name TEXT price F64 FAST

# 2. Wait for indexing
SEARCH.WAITINDEXING products-v2

# 3. Swap alias
SEARCH.ALIASADD products products-v2

# 4. Drop old index
SEARCH.DROP products-v1

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Deleting an Alias

The SEARCH.ALIASDEL command removes an alias.

Returns 1 if the alias was deleted, or 0 if the alias was not found.

TypeScript

const result = await redis.search.alias.delete({ alias: "products" });

Python

result = redis.search.alias.delete(alias="products")

Redis CLI

SEARCH.ALIASDEL products

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Listing Aliases

The SEARCH.LISTALIASES command returns all aliases and the indices they point to.

TypeScript

const aliases = await redis.search.alias.list();
// → { "products": "products-v2", "users": "users-v1" }

Python

aliases = redis.search.alias.list()
# → {"products": "products-v2", "users": "users-v1"}

Redis CLI

SEARCH.LISTALIASES
# → [["products", "products-v2"], ["users", "users-v1"]]