expire

Set a key’s time to live in seconds

Description

Set a timeout on a key. After the timeout has expired, the key will automatically be deleted.

Method Signature

expire(key: string, seconds: number, option?: ExpireOption): Promise<0 | 1>

Parameters

key · string · required

The key to set expiration on

seconds · number · required

The number of seconds until the key expires

option · ExpireOption

Optional modifier for the expiration behavior:

• "NX" - Set expiry only when the key has no expiry
• "XX" - Set expiry only when the key has an existing expiry
• "GT" - Set expiry only when the new expiry is greater than current one
• "LT" - Set expiry only when the new expiry is less than current one

Case-insensitive (can use lowercase: "nx", "xx", "gt", "lt")

Return Value

result · 0 | 1

• 1 if the timeout was set
• 0 if the timeout was not set (key doesn’t exist or condition not met)

Examples

Basic expiration

await redis.set("mykey", "value");
const result = await redis.expire("mykey", 10);
console.log(result); // 1

// Key will be deleted after 10 seconds

Set expiry only if key has no expiry (NX)

await redis.set("mykey", "value");

const result1 = await redis.expire("mykey", 100, "NX");
console.log(result1); // 1 (set because key had no expiry)

const result2 = await redis.expire("mykey", 50, "NX");
console.log(result2); // 0 (not set because key already has expiry)

Set expiry only if new expiry is greater (GT)

await redis.set("mykey", "value");
await redis.expire("mykey", 100);

const result1 = await redis.expire("mykey", 200, "GT");
console.log(result1); // 1 (200 > 100)

const result2 = await redis.expire("mykey", 50, "GT");
console.log(result2); // 0 (50 < 200)

Non-existent key

const result = await redis.expire("nonexistent", 10);
console.log(result); // 0

See Also

• ttl - Get the time to live for a key
• persist - Remove the expiration from a key