Correct way to link redis to sinatra docker containers - ruby

Question

I am writing a small microservices based app, and in it I have a redis instance that some ruby code/containers access to use for via Resque. Currently in my docker compose I am linking like so:
redis:
image: redis:latest
ports:
- '6379:6379'
ruby_worker:
image: my_user/my_image:latest
links:
- redis:db
This works fine(I only name it :db for now cause that is the example I found when looking up linking).
In my ruby code, I have to set up my Resque redis server like:
Resque.redis = ENV['DB_PORT_6379_TCP_ADDR'] + ':6379'
But this just doesn't seem right. It is dependent on that exact redis name, and if I had to spin up a different redis instance(like how I did while playing with docker cloud today), it doesn't find the redis server. In total I have 3 containers(so far) connecting to this redis for resque. A small sinatra based front end, and 2 workers. I am not much of a rails person, and have never used resque before 3 days ago. So sorry if I missed some of the basics.
Is there a better way to connect to my redis instance in my ruby code? Is there a way to pass the redis name in my docker-compose? Right now my resque-web container is configured like below and it seems to work fine:
resque:
image: ennexa/resque-web
links:
- redis:redisserver
ports:
- "5678:5678"
command: "-r redis://redisserver:6379"

Answer 1

Don't use those link environment variables, they are deprecated, and they don't exist in user defined networks anymore.
A good way to do this would be first to default to the name hostname redis. You can always alias any service to have that name, so you should almost never need to change it from the default. For example:
links:
- someservice:redis
To override the default, you can create some application specific env var like REDIS_HOSTNAME, and set it from the environment section (but again, this is almost never necessary):
environment:
REDIS_HOSTNAME=foo