skills/redis-development/rules/rqe-field-types.md

title	impact	impactDescription	tags	description	alwaysApply
Choose the Correct Field Type	HIGH	Use TAG instead of TEXT for filtering to improve query speed 10x	rqe, field-types, text, tag, numeric, geo, geoshape, vector	Choose the Correct Field Type	true

Choose the Correct Field Type

Each field type has different capabilities and performance characteristics.

Field Type	Use When	Notes
TEXT	Full-text search needed	Tokenized, stemmed
TAG	Exact match, filtering	Faster than TEXT for filtering
NUMERIC	Range queries, sorting	Use for prices, counts, timestamps
GEO	Point location queries	Lat/long coordinates (single points)
GEOSHAPE	Area/region queries	Polygons, circles, rectangles
VECTOR	Similarity search	HNSW or FLAT algorithm

Correct: Use TAG for exact matching.

# Good: TAG for exact category matching
FT.CREATE idx:products ON HASH PREFIX 1 product:
    SCHEMA
        category TAG SORTABLE
        status TAG

Java (Jedis):

import redis.clients.jedis.search.*;

Schema schema = new Schema()
    .addTextField("name", 1)
    .addTagField("categories");  // TAG for exact matching

IndexDefinition def = new IndexDefinition(IndexDefinition.Type.HASH);

jedis.ftCreate("idx", IndexOptions.defaultOptions().setDefinition(def), schema);

// Query with TAG syntax
SearchResult result = jedis.ftSearch("idx", "@categories:{chef|runner}");

Incorrect: Using TEXT when you don't need full-text features.

# Overkill: TEXT for category adds unnecessary tokenization
FT.CREATE idx:products ON HASH PREFIX 1 product:
    SCHEMA
        category TEXT
        status TEXT

Java (Jedis):

// Bad: TEXT for categories adds unnecessary overhead
Schema schema = new Schema()
    .addTextField("name", 1)
    .addTextField("categories", 1);  // Overkill for exact matching

Correct: Use GEO for points, GEOSHAPE for areas.

# GEO for point locations (stores, users)
FT.CREATE idx:stores ON HASH PREFIX 1 store:
    SCHEMA
        location GEO

# GEOSHAPE for areas (delivery zones, boundaries)
FT.CREATE idx:zones ON JSON PREFIX 1 zone:
    SCHEMA
        $.boundary AS boundary GEOSHAPE

Reference: Redis Search Field Types