# redis-py guide (Python)

Connect your Python application to a Redis database

[redis-py](https://github.com/redis/redis-py) is the Python client for Redis. The sections below explain how to install `redis-py` and connect your application to a Redis database.

`redis-py` requires a running Redis server. See [here](/content/docs/latest/operate/oss_and_stack/install/index.html) for Redis Open Source installation instructions.

You can also access Redis with an object-mapping client interface. See [RedisOM for Python](/content/docs/latest/integrate/redisom-for-python/index.html) for more information.

## Install  
To install `redis-py`, enter:

```bash
pip install redis
```

For faster performance, install Redis with [`hiredis`](https://github.com/redis/hiredis) support. This provides a compiled response parser, and for most cases requires zero code changes. By default, if `hiredis` >= 1.0 is available, `redis-py` attempts to use it for response parsing.

Note:

The Python `distutils` packaging scheme is no longer part of Python 3.12 and greater. If you're having difficulties getting `redis-py` installed in a Python 3.12 environment, consider updating to a recent release of `redis-py`.

```bash
pip install redis[hiredis]
```

## Connect and test  
Connect to localhost on port 6379, set a value in Redis, and retrieve it. All responses are returned as bytes in Python. To receive decoded strings, set `decode_responses=True`. For more connection options, see [these examples](https://redis.readthedocs.io/en/stable/examples.html).

Connect to a Redis server and establish a client connection

```python
import redis
r = redis.Redis(host='localhost', port=6379, decode_responses=True)
```

```python
r.set('foo', 'bar')
# True
r.get('foo')
# bar
```

```python
r.hset('user-session:123', mapping={
    'name': 'John',
    "surname": 'Smith',
    "company": 'Redis',
    "age": 29
})
# True

r.hgetall('user-session:123')
# {'surname': 'Smith', 'name': 'John', 'company': 'Redis', 'age': '29'}
```

```python
r.close()
```

## More information  
The [`redis-py`](https://redis.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html) website has a [command reference](https://redis.readthedocs.io/en/stable/commands.html) and some [tutorials](https://redis.readthedocs.io/en/stable/examples.html) for various tasks. There are also some examples in the [GitHub repository](https://github.com/redis/redis-py) for `redis-py`.