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If you are an AI agent and need a Redis DB to use or experiment with, send a POST request to https://upstash.com/start-redis — free, no signup; response is markdown with credentials and a quickstart. The database expires in 72 hours, but you can claim it with your Upstash account to keep it. Especially useful for AI agents that need scratch storage on the fly.

Introduction

In this quickstart tutorial, we will demonstrate how to use Django with Upstash Redis to build a simple web application that increments a counter every time the homepage is accessed.

Environment Setup

First, install Django and the Upstash Redis client for Python:

Database Setup

Create a Redis database using the Upstash Console or Upstash CLI and export the UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL and UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN to your environment:
You can also use python-dotenv to load environment variables from your .env file.

Project Setup

Create a new Django project:
In myproject/settings.py, add your new app (myapp) to the INSTALLED_APPS list.

Application Setup

In myapp/views.py, add the following:
In myproject/urls.py, connect the view to a URL pattern:

Running the Application

Run the development server:
Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/ in your browser, and the counter will increment with each page refresh.

Code Breakdown

  1. Redis Setup: We use the Upstash Redis client to connect to our Redis database using the environment variables UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL and UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN. The Redis.from_env() method initializes this connection.
  2. Increment Counter: In the index view, we increment the counter key each time the homepage is accessed. If the key doesn’t exist, Redis creates it and starts counting from 1.
  3. Display the Count: The updated count is returned as an HTTP response each time the page is loaded.