Getting Connection Strings

The IBM Cloud® Databases for Redis service is provisioned with authentication enabled. You need a username, password, and connection strings to connect and issue commands. In Redis 5.x and prior, there is only the admin user. Redis did not introduce support for multiple users until Redis 6.

Connection Strings for your deployment are displayed on the Dashboard Overview, in the Endpoints section. All users on your deployment can use the connection strings, including connection strings for either public or private endpoints.

Your connection string will default to database 0. However, modifying your connection to connect to a database other than 0 is supported.

Your Redis deployment is provisioned with an admin user. You must set the admin password before you can use it to connect to the database. For more information, see the Setting the Admin Password page.

Getting Connection Strings from the CLI

You can grab connection strings from the CLI.

ibmcloud cdb deployment-connections example-deployment -u <newusername> [--endpoint-type <endpoint type>]

Full connection information is returned by the ibmcloud cdb deployment-connections command with the --all flag. To retrieve all the connection information for a deployment named "example-deployment", use the following command.

ibmcloud cdb deployment-connections example-deployment -u <newusername> --all [--endpoint-type <endpoint type>]

If you don't specify a user, the deployment-connections commands return information for the admin user by default. If you don't specify an endpoint type, the connection string returns the public endpoint by default. If your deployment has only a private endpoint, you must specify --endpoint-type private or the commands return an error. The user and endpoint type is not enforced. You can use any user on your deployment with either endpoint (if both exist on your deployment).

To use the ibmcloud cdb CLI commands, you must install the Cloud Databases plug-in.

Getting Connection Strings from the API

To retrieve user's connection strings from the API, use the /users/{userid}/connections endpoint. You must specify in the path which user and which type of endpoint (public or private) is used in the returned connection strings. The user and endpoint type is not enforced. You can use any user on your deployment with either endpoint (if both exist on your deployment).

curl -X GET -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIKEY" 'https://api.{region}.databases.cloud.ibm.com/v4/ibm/deployments/{id}/users/{userid}/connections/{endpoint_type}'

Connection String Breakdown

The Redis Section

The "Redis" section contains information that is suited for your applications that make connections to Redis.

Table 1. redis/URI connection information
Field Name	Index	Description
`Type`		Type of connection - for Redis, it is "URI"
`Scheme`		Scheme for a URI - for Redis, it is "rediss"
`Path`		Path for a URI - for Redis, it is the database number
`Authentication`	`Username`	The username that you use to connect.
`Authentication`	`Password`	A password for the user - might be shown as `$PASSWORD`
`Authentication`	`Method`	How authentication takes place; "direct" authentication is handled by the driver.
`Hosts`	`0...`	A hostname and port to connect to
`Composed`	`0...`	A URI combining Scheme, Authentication, Host, and Path
`Certificate`	`Name`	The allocated name for the self-signed certificate for database deployment
`Certificate`	Base64	A base64 encoded version of the certificate.

0... indicates that there might be one or more of these entries in an array.

For more information, see Connecting an External Application page.

The CLI Section

The "CLI" section contains information that is suited for command-line clients that make connections to Redis.

Table 2. redis/cli connection information
Field Name	Index	Description
`Bin`		The recommended binary to create a connection; in this case it is `redli`.
`Composed`		A formatted command to establish a connection to your deployment. The command combines the `Bin` executable, `Environment` variable settings and uses `Arguments` as command-line parameters.
`Environment`		A list of keys or values you set as environment variables.
`Arguments`	0...	The information that is passed as arguments to the command shown in the Bin field.
`Certificate`	Base64	A self-signed certificate that is used to confirm that an application is connecting to the appropriate server. It is base64 encoded.
`Certificate`	Name	The allocated name for the self-signed certificate.
`Type`		The type of package that uses this connection information; in this case `cli`.

0... indicates that there might be one or more of these entries in an array.

For more information, see Connecting with a command line client page.