What is the proper way of using HDEL with an array of fields?

[da99]

Is HDEL supposed to be used as the following?:

client.hdel( my_key, [ field1, field2, ...] , callback );

or:

client.hdel( [ my_key, field1, field2, ...] , callback );

Right now, with node-redis 0.8.2, (no hiredis), the second approach works perfectly, The first approach only works with an array of length 1: [ field1 ]. Is this the correct behaviour? Or should it be the first approach?

Here is a more complete code example:

var redis = require("redis"),
client = redis.createClient();

client.hmset("my_hash", {a: "a", b: "b"}, function (e, r) {
  redis.print(e,r);
  client.hmset("my_hash", {c: "c", d: "d"}, function (e, r) {
    redis.print(e,r);
    client.hdel('my_hash', ['a', 'c', 'd'], function (e, r) {

      redis.print(e,'This does not work: instead of 3 we get: ' + r);
      client.hdel("my_hash", 'a', 'c', 'd', function (e, r) {
        redis.print(e,'We get what we want using this approach: ' + r);
        client.quit();
      });
    });
  });
});

[brycebaril]

TL;DR: yes, for now you'll need to use your second example or call client.send_command("hdel", [key, arg1, arg2], callback) directly.

There are similar issues existing with the smart parsing, see issue #292 and pull request #276

The reason the latter example works is because you're essentially just passing the array directly to send_command() as if you were doing this:

client.send_command("hdel", [ my_key, field1, field2, ...] , callback );

This is essentially how all commands are parsed and sent to Redis.

client.COMMAND("key", "arg1", "arg2", "arg3", callback);

using some arguments sniffing, this gets converted to:

client.COMMAND(["key", "arg1", "arg2", "arg3"], callback);
// let's call ["key", "arg1", "arg2", "arg3"] `args`

which is then dispatched to

client.send_command(COMMAND, args, callback);

then in send_command, if each arg isn't a string, arg.toString() is called as it is sent, which in the case of your first command means ["a", "b", "c"] turns into a,b,c:

*3
$4
hdel
$7
my_hash
$5
a,c,d

Whereas the syntax you need is:

*5
$4
hdel
$7
my_hash
$1
a
$1
c
$1
d

[da99]

It all makes sense now thanks to your details on COMMAND and send_command. Thank you very much. That answered my question and any future ones I could possibly have.

[BridgeAR]

This got closed by #838