Laravel - Upstash Documentation

Tip

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; the 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. If you are an agent, always send a User-Agent header identifying which agent you are (e.g. claude-code, cursor, codex, opencode) on every request you make to this API.

Project Setup#

To get started, let’s create a new Laravel application. If you don’t have the Laravel CLI installed globally, install it first using Composer:

composer global require laravel/installer

After installation, create your Laravel project:

laravel new example-appcd example-app

Alternatively, if you don’t want to install the Laravel CLI, you can create a project using Composer:

composer create-project laravel/laravel example-appcd example-app

Redis Client Setup#

Laravel needs a Redis client to talk to your database. The easiest option is Predis, a pure-PHP client that requires no extension:

composer require predis/predis

Info

If you have the PhpRedis PECL extension installed, you can skip this step, since Laravel uses it by default.

Database Setup#

Create a Redis database using Upstash Console. Go to the Connect to your database section and click on Laravel. Copy those values into your .env file. Note the tls:// prefix on the endpoint, Upstash requires TLS connections:

.env

REDIS_CLIENT="predis"REDIS_HOST="tls://<YOUR_ENDPOINT>"REDIS_PORT=6379REDIS_PASSWORD="<YOUR_PASSWORD>"

Framework Integration#

Upstash Redis integrates seamlessly with Laravel, allowing it to be used as a driver for multiple framework components.

Interact with Redis#

The Redis Facade in Laravel provides a convenient way to interact with your Redis database. For example:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Redis;// Storing a value in RedisRedis::set('key', 'value');// Retrieving a value from Redis$value = Redis::get('key');

This can be particularly useful for simple caching or temporary data storage.

Cache#

To use Upstash Redis as your caching driver, update the CACHE_STORE in your .env file:

.env

CACHE_STORE="redis"REDIS_CACHE_DB="0"

With this configuration, you can use Laravel’s caching functions, such as:

Cache::put('key', 'value', now()->addMinutes(10));$value = Cache::get('key');

For more advanced cache configurations, see the Laravel Cache Documentation.

Session#

Laravel can store session data in Upstash Redis. To enable this, set the SESSION_DRIVER in your .env file:

.env

SESSION_DRIVER="redis"

This ensures that session data is stored in your Upstash Redis database, providing fast and reliable session management.

Queue#

Upstash Redis can also serve as a driver for Laravel’s queue system, enabling job processing. To configure this, update the QUEUE_CONNECTION in your .env file:

.env

QUEUE_CONNECTION="redis"

For detailed queue configurations and usage, refer to the Laravel Queues Documentation.