Redis looking for env redis url variable not sure

Question

I am quite new to redis. This rails application has a redis.rb file in config/initializers

uri = URI.parse(ENV["REDIS_URL"])
$redis = Redis.new(:host => uri.host, :port => uri.port, :password => uri.password)

The redis url is on heroku config.

I can't just replace REDIS_URL with the REDIS_URL from heroku config.

I am getting a URI parse error

 bad URI(is not URI?):  (URI::InvalidURIError)

my question is where should I place the redis url ? where is it searching the env variable from?

Answer 1

I'm guessing you're getting this when doing rake. The problem is that when rake-ing, your environment variables aren't set, which leads to this error (info at https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/rails-asset-pipeline). To overcome, use a conditional intializer instead, e.g.:

if ENV["REDISCLOUD_URL"]
    uri = URI.parse(ENV["REDISCLOUD_URL"])
    $redis = Redis.new(:host => uri.host, :port => uri.port, :password => uri.password)
end

P.S. alternatively, use this but note that according to Heroku:

Using this labs feature is considered counter to Heroku best practices. This labs feature can make your builds less deterministic and require re-deploys after making config changes. Ideally your app should be able to build without config.