ServiceStack Redis, how to return Lua table as List

Question

I'm using the Redis client from ServiceStack. I have a Lua script that fills up a Lua table with results from several Redis calls. I want to return this table in some way. My thought was to use the method ExecLuaShaAsList from the client lib and in the lua script just do a "return myTable". It doesnt work, I always get an empty list back.

How to return the lua table to the redis client?

This the C# script I use with the Redis client:

using (var redisClient = GetPooledRedisClient())
{
    var sha1 = redisClient.LoadLuaScript(luaBody);
    List<string> theList = redisClient.ExecLuaShaAsList(sha1);
    int listLength = theList.Count(); //listLength is always 0 for some reason
}

UPDATE AFTER TIPS FROM BELOW ANSWER

This is how LuaBody is created:

    private string GetLuaScript(List<CatalogItem> categories, List<CatalogItem> products)
    {
        string categoriesToAggregate = string.Join("\",\"", categories.Select(c=>c.Name));
        categoriesToAggregate = "\"" + categoriesToAggregate + "\"";

        string csSearchResult = string.Join("\",\"", products.Select(c => c.Name));
        csSearchResult = "\"" + csSearchResult + "\"";


        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        sb.AppendLine("local categoriesToAggregate = {").Append(categoriesToAggregate).Append("}                        ");
        sb.AppendLine("local csSearchResult = {").Append(csSearchResult).Append("}                                      ");
        sb.AppendLine("local result = {}                                                                                ");
        sb.AppendLine();
        sb.AppendLine("for i=1,#categoriesToAggregate do                                                                ");
        sb.AppendLine(" result[categoriesToAggregate[i]] = 0                                                            ");
        sb.AppendLine();
        sb.AppendLine(" for j=1,#csSearchResult do                                                                      ");
        sb.AppendLine("     local fieldValue = redis.call('hget', 'asr:'..csSearchResult[j], categoriesToAggregate[i])  ");
        sb.AppendLine("     if fieldValue then                                                                          ");
        sb.AppendLine("         result[categoriesToAggregate[i]] = result[categoriesToAggregate[i]] + fieldValue        ");
        sb.AppendLine("     end                                                                                         ");
        sb.AppendLine(" end                                                                                             ");
        sb.AppendLine("end                                                                                              ");
        sb.AppendLine();
        sb.AppendLine("return cjson.encode(result)                                                                      ");

        return sb.ToString();
    }

Answer 1

From Lua, you need to return a Lua Array, or a JSON object. 'myTable' sounds like a handle that is only valid inside the Lua interpreter. That handle is cleaned up directly after the call, so won't get propagated to the client.

Edit: a simple Lua Table/Array should be supported. Not sure what's going on then, without looking at the script.

See also this SO link for some extra info about atomicity of Lua scripts.

Hope this helps, TW

After edit OP:

This was the OP's original Lua script:

local a={}
for i = 1, 1, 1 do
  a["47700415"] = redis.call('hget', 'asr:47700415', 'MDEngines')
  a["47700415_000"] = redis.call('hget', 'asr:47700415_000', 'MGEngines')
end
return a

Answer: You can't return nested values in the Lua return value. As you can see from your ServiceStack function, a Lua script returns a list, and a list is not nested.

Here are two solutions, the one with JSON gives slight overhead (but might be easier when programming, and is nill-safe).

a: Using cjson

local a={}
for i = 1, 1, 1 do
  a["47700415"] = redis.call('hget', 'asr:47700415', 'MDEngines')
  a["47700415_000"] = redis.call('hget', 'asr:47700415_000', 'MGEngines')
end
return cjson.encode(a)

MsgPack is also a very nice and compact serialization format (we use it a lot), and can be returned like this:

a-alt: Using cmsgpack

return cmsgpack.pack(a)

b: Using a simple array

local a={}
for i = 1, 1, 1 do
  a[1] = "47700415"
  a[2] = redis.call('hget', 'asr:47700415', 'MDEngines')
  a[3] = "47700415_000"
  a[4] = redis.call('hget', 'asr:47700415_000', 'MGEngines')
end
return a

This returns:

a:

tw@srv-flux-02:~$ redis-cli -p 14312 EVAL "$(cat ~/tw_luatest.lua)" 0 0
"{\"47700415\":\"Hello\",\"47700415_000\":\"World\"}"

b:

tw@srv-flux-02:~$ redis-cli -p 14312 EVAL "$(cat ~/tw_luatest2.lua)" 0 0
1) "47700415"
2) "Hello"
3) "47700415_000"
4) "World"

As you can see, I put some dummy data in the HSET.

I can also recommend this link, some nice info in there: intro-to-lua-for-redis-programmers

A nice way of adding values to a Lua dict can be seen here :

local fkeys = redis.call('sinter', unpack(KEYS))
local r = {}
for i, key in ipairs(fkeys) do
  r[#r+1] = redis.call('hgetall',key)
end
return r