Laravel by default uses Predis to connect to Redis.

On servers which have PhpRedis installed, you may want to use it instead of Predis for performance. This package provides a drop-in replacement for the RedisServiceProvider that comes with Laravel.

• PHP 5.3+
• PhpRedis
• Laravel 4.x/5.x

First, of course, make sure PhpRedis is installed on the server. See here for installation instructions.

Add the dependency to composer.json:

"require": {
    "vetruvet/laravel-phpredis": "1.*"
}

Add the PhpRedisServiceProvider to config/app.php (comment out built-in RedisServiceProvider):

...
'providers' => array(
    ...
    // 'Illuminate\Redis\RedisServiceProvider',
    'Vetruvet\PhpRedis\PhpRedisServiceProvider',
    ...
),
...

The default Facade alias conflicts with the Redis class provided by PhpRedis. To fix this, rename the alias in config/app.php:

...
'aliases' => array(
    ...
    'LRedis'           => 'Illuminate\Support\Facades\Redis', 
    ...
),
...

An unfortunate side effect is that you need to call the Redis functions like LRedis::connection() now which does not look as nice or slick, but everything still works the same way (you can call Redis commands as usual, e.g. LRedis::get('key').

Finally run composer update to update and install everything.

Configuration is just like the default config for Redis in Laravel. In fact, you can switch between PhpRedis and Predis without changing your configuration (no guarantees for clustering or serialization though).

All options are optional, you can specify an empty array to get the default connection configuration:

'redis' => array(

    'cluster' => true, // if true a RedisArray will be created

    'default' => array(
        'host'       => '127.0.0.1', // default: '127.0.0.1'
        'port'       => 6379,        // default: 6379
        'password'   => password     // default: null
        'prefix'     => 'myapp:',    // default: ''
        'database'   => 7,           // default: 0
        'timeout'    => 0.5,         // default: 0 (no timeout)
        'serializer' => 'igbinary'   // default: 'none', possible values: 'none', 'php', 'igbinary'
    ),

),

The only option that is not self-explanatory is the serializer option. The values correspond directly to the Redis::SERIALIZER_* constants in PhpRedis. If you specify igbinary, igbinary will be used as the serializer if PhpRedis was compiled with --enable-redis-igbinary, falling back to PHP's built-in serializer otherwise.