This is a submission for the Redis AI Challenge: Real-Time AI Innovators.
What I Built
SmartStay is a real-time lodging management application designed to help users browse, search, and manage rental properties efficiently.
Built entirely on Redis Stack 8, SmartStay leverages Redis as its primary database and real-time data layer, providing:
- Storage of lodging data with Redis Hashes, including title, description, price, image URL, and vector embeddings.
- Powerful full-text search and numeric filtering with RediSearch.
- Semantic vector search using 1536-dimensional embeddings generated via OpenAI to find similar properties.
- Popularity tracking using Sorted Sets, updated live with each user interaction.
- Real-time notifications through Redis Streams and Pub/Sub, enabling instant updates in the UI.
This project highlights how Redis can power a sophisticated AI-driven application beyond simple caching, delivering an interactive and intelligent lodging platform.
Project Repository
You can find the full source code and setup instructions on GitHub:
https://github.com/joupify/SmartStay
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Demo
Below is a demo video showcasing the core features of SmartStay:
Watch the video
Screenshots
📌 Home Page (CRUD)
📌 Real-Time Notifications (2 browsers)
📌 Text & AI Search (See Similar button)
📌 Dashboard (Top lodgings + recent events)
How I Used Redis 8
In SmartStay, Redis 8 serves as the core real-time data layer powering all lodging management and AI-driven features. Here's how Redis was leveraged:
Primary Database: All lodging data is stored directly in Redis Hashes (lodging:{id}), avoiding any external databases.
RediSearch Full-Text and Vector Search: Created a RediSearch index with text fields (title,description) and a 1536-dimensional vector field for semantic search. This enables powerful full-text queries and AI-powered vector similarity search.
Vector Embeddings: Lodging descriptions and titles are converted into vector embeddings (via OpenAI or mocked vectors), stored as FLOAT32 arrays in Redis, enabling semantic search with cosine similarity.
Sorted Sets for Popularity: Lodgings’ popularity scores are tracked in a Redis Sorted Set, incremented on each view, allowing efficient ranking queries.
Redis Streams & Pub/Sub: All CRUD events emit real-time notifications through Redis Streams and Pub/Sub channels, powering live UI updates with ActionCable.
Caching & Expiration: Embeddings are cached with TTLs to optimize performance and reduce external API calls.
Atomic Operations: Redis commands ensure fast, atomic updates for popularity, searches, and CRUD operations.
This approach highlights Redis 8’s multi-model capabilities — serving as a primary database, real-time event bus, and AI vector search engine — all within a single, high-performance data layer.
🚀 Submission by Malika (@joupify)
Project: SmartStay – Redis-Powered Lodging Manager
Type: Individual Submission
<!-- ⚠️ By submitting this entry, you agree to receive communications from Redis regarding products, services, events, and special offers. You can unsubscribe at any time. Your information will be handled in accordance with Redis's Privacy Policy. -->This is a submission for the Redis AI Challenge: Real-Time AI Innovators.