Yes, the way you have it set up, these are all just separate keys. You can think of the namespace as an understanding you have with all the people who will access the Redis store
Okay guys, here's the deal. We're all going to use keys that look like this:
user:{user_id}:lastMessages
That way, we all understand where to look to get user number 325's last messages.
But really, there's nothing shared between user:111:lastMessages
and user:111:isNice
.
The fix
A way you can do what you're describing is using a hash. You will create a hash whose key is user:111
and then add fields lastMessages
and isNice
.
> hset user:111 lastMessages "you are my friend!"
> hset user:111 isNice true
> expire user:111 1000
Or, all at once,
> hmset user:111 lastMessages "you are my friend!" isNice true
> expire user:111 1000
Here is a page describing redis' data types. Scroll down to where it says 'Hashes' for more information.
Edit
Ah, I hadn't noticed you were using a list.
If you don't have too many messages (under 20, say), you could serialize them into JSON and store them as one string. That's not a very good solution though.
The cleanest way might just be to set two expires.