docs/pool.md
# `RedisClientPool`
Sometimes you want to run your commands on an exclusive connection. There are a few reasons to do this:
- You want to run a blocking command that will take over the connection, such as `BLPOP` or `BLMOVE`.
- You're using [transactions](https://redis.io/docs/interact/transactions/) and need to `WATCH` a key or keys for changes.
- Some more...
For those use cases you'll need to create a connection pool.
## Creating a pool
You can create a pool using the `createClientPool` function:
```javascript
import { createClientPool } from 'redis';
const pool = await createClientPool()
.on('error', err => console.error('Redis Client Pool Error', err));
```
the function accepts two arguments, the client configuration (see [here](./client-configuration.md) for more details), and the pool configuration:
| Property | Default | Description |
|----------------|---------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| minimum | 1 | The minimum clients the pool should hold to. The pool won't close clients if the pool size is less than the minimum. |
| maximum | 100 | The maximum clients the pool will have at once. The pool won't create any more resources and queue requests in memory. |
| acquireTimeout | 3000 | The maximum time (in ms) a task can wait in the queue. The pool will reject the task with `TimeoutError` in case of a timeout. |
| cleanupDelay | 3000 | The time to wait before cleaning up unused clients. |
You can also create a pool from a client (reusing it's configuration):
```javascript
const pool = await client.createPool()
.on('error', err => console.error('Redis Client Pool Error', err));
```
## The Simple Scenario
All the client APIs are exposed on the pool instance directly, and will execute the commands using one of the available clients.
```javascript
await pool.sendCommand(['PING']); // 'PONG'
await client.ping(); // 'PONG'
await client.withTypeMapping({
[RESP_TYPES.SIMPLE_STRING]: Buffer
}).ping(); // Buffer
```
## Transactions
Things get a little more complex with transactions. Here we are `.watch()`ing some keys. If the keys change during the transaction, a `WatchError` is thrown when `.exec()` is called:
```javascript
try {
await pool.execute(async client => {
await client.watch('key');
const multi = client.multi()
.ping()
.get('key');
if (Math.random() > 0.5) {
await client.watch('another-key');
multi.set('another-key', await client.get('another-key') / 2);
}
return multi.exec();
});
} catch (err) {
if (err instanceof WatchError) {
// the transaction aborted
}
}
```