In Redis, the TYPE command returns a key’s type. More specifically, it returns the string representation of the type of the value stored at a given key.

Syntax

TYPE key

Where key is the key in question.

Example

Here’s an example to demonstrate:

TYPE firstname

Result:

string

Here, the firstname key holds a string.

Let’s try another key:

TYPE pets

Result:

list

In this case the pets key holds a list.

The different types that can be returned are: string, list, set, zset, hash and stream. Note that these are different to the internal encodings returned by the OBJECT ENCODING command.