setex fails with "value is not an integer or out of range"

[abhinavsingh]

Hi,

I am trying to use setex method, however it fails with following error:

"value is not an integer or out of range"

I am using it as below:

r.setex(sid, ttl.seconds, jsn)
where ttl is a timedelta object

Here is the trace:

▶ Local vars
/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/redis/client.py in setex

        return self.execute_command('SETEX', name, time, value)

...

▶ Local vars
/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/redis/client.py in execute_command

            return self.parse_response(connection, command_name, **options)

...

▶ Local vars
/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/redis/client.py in parse_response

        response = connection.read_response()

...

▶ Local vars
/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/redis/connection.py in read_response

            raise response

...

▼ Local vars
Variable Value
self

<redis.connection.Connection object at 0x10f7050d0>

response

ResponseError('value is not an integer or out of range',)

However the same thing succeeds via it's non-atomic version:

r.set(sid, jsn)
r.expire(sid, ttl.seconds)

what am i doing wrong (if any), or probably there is some bug to be fixed.

[andymccurdy]

You're probably use an instance of Redis rather than StrictRedis. The Redis class makes some things a little more natural/Pythonic. It's recommended to use the StrictRedis class which adheres to the standard argument order.

[abhinavsingh]

thanks that was it...

[paulocheque]

But I did not understand why this is not a bug.

The following code works fine:
r.set('x', 1)
r.expire('x', 123456789)

But using r.setex('x', 123456789, 1) does not work.

PS: I am using the redis.from_url(redis_url) method.

So why the from_url does not return a StrictRedis instead of a Redis?

[andymccurdy]

@paulocheque Try:

StrictRedis.from_url(redis_url)

if you want a StrictRedis instance.

[desprit]

If someone is still facing this issue, consider switching from:

r.setex('x', 'y', 1)

to

r.setex('x', 1, 'y')

because according to Redis docs it should be:
redis> SETEX mykey 10 "Hello"

[Labrat02]

@desprit, your suggestion is exactly the opposite of an issue I just faced. I also noticed that Redis documented the order to be (Key, TTL, Value), but in fact in Python is appears that the Time value does in fact go at the end.

import redis
db = redis.Redis(host='hostname')
db.setex('keyname', 60, serialized_value)  # Did not work!
db.setex('keyname', serialized_value, 60)  # Did work!

I'm fairly new to the Python language so your suggestion confuses me a little bit. It seems that sometimes you can pass named parameters (such as host='hostname'), which I have done to get values to the constructor of a custom object, but can you also reorder parameters the way you suggest? If so, then perhaps your suggestion would work so long as the value is a string type but it failed for me perhaps because I am storing an dumped/serialized object?

[andymccurdy]

@Labrat02 If you use the redis.StrictRedis client, the method signature will be the same as as the Redis documentation. (key, ttl, value).

[shyal]

Explicit is always better than not.

self._cache.setex(name=key, time=10, value=value)

[gergelypolonkai]

The same happens if you provide a negative value for time.

[Jakobovski]

This can also happen if the time value passed is a float and not an int!