Recover from dropped connection in redis pub/sub

Question

I am running client that is connecting to a redis db. The client is on a WiFi connection and will drop the connection at times. Unfortunately, when this happens, the program just keeps running without throwing any type of warning.

r = redis.StrictRedis(host=XX, password=YY...)
ps = r.pubsub()
ps.subscribe("12345")
for items in ps.listen():
    if items['type'] == 'message':
       data = items['data']

Ideally, what I am looking for is a catch an event when the connection is lost, try and reestablish the connection, do some error correcting, then get things back up and running. Should this be done in the python program? Should I have an external watchdog?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, one have to 'ping' Redis to check if it is available. If You try to put a value to Redis storage, it will raise an ConnectionError exception if connection is lost. But the listen() generator will not close automatically when connection is lost.

I think that hacking Redis' connection pool could help, give it a try.

P.S. In is very insecure to connect to redis in an untrusted network environment.