Redis in python, how do you close the connection?

Just use redis.Redis. It uses a connection pool under the hood, so you don’t have to worry about managing at that level.

If you absolutely have to use a low level connection, you need to do the response handling that is normally done for you by redis.Redis.

Here’s an example of executing a single command using the low level connection:

def execute_low_level(command, *args, **kwargs):
    connection = redis.Connection(**kwargs)
    try:
        connection.connect()
        connection.send_command(command, *args)

        response = connection.read_response()
        if command in redis.Redis.RESPONSE_CALLBACKS:
            return redis.Redis.RESPONSE_CALLBACKS[command](response)
        return response

    finally:
        del connection

Example usage:

response = execute_low_level(
        'HGET', 'redis:key', 'hash:key', host="localhost", port=6379)

But as I said before, redis.Redis is the way to go in 99.9% of cases.