This add-on is operated by MemCachier

Reliable and powerful memcache-as-a-service

Last updated June 20, 2023

MemCachier is an implementation of the Memcached in-memory key/value store used for caching data. It is a key technology in modern web applications for scaling and reducing server loads. The MemCachier add-on manages and scales clusters of memcache servers so you can focus on your app. Tell us how much memory you need and get started for free instantly. Add capacity later as you need it.

Follow our blog or Twitter (@memcachier), for status and product announcements.

Getting started

Start by installing the add-on:

$ heroku addons:create memcachier:dev

You can start with more memory if you know you’ll need it:

$ heroku addons:create memcachier:100
$ heroku addons:create memcachier:500
 ... etc ...

Once the add-on has been added you’ll notice three new variables in heroku config:

$ heroku config
...
MEMCACHIER_SERVERS    => mcX.ec2.memcachier.com
MEMCACHIER_USERNAME   => bobslob
MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD   => l0nGr4ndoMstr1Ngo5strang3CHaR4cteRS
...

Next, setup your app to start using the cache. We have documentation for the following languages and frameworks:

• Ruby
• Rails
• Ruby Puma Webserver
• Rack::Cache
• Python
• Django
• PHP
• WordPress
• CakePHP
• Symfony2
• Laravel
• Node.js
• Java

Supported Protocols: ASCII & Binary

MemCachier supports both the memcache binary and ASCII protocols. Our preferred method is to use the binary protocol as it natively supports user authentication and improves the performance slightly over the ASCII protocol. All our documentation is written for using the binary protocol.

The ASCII protocol does not natively support user authentication. For MemCachier, where all connections require authentication, we extend the ASCII protocol in a very simple way. Once the connection is established, you should send a set command with your username as the key and your password as the value. For example:

$ telnet 35865.1e4cfd.us-east-3.ec2.prod.memcachier.com 11211
>
> set 15F38e 0 0 32
> 52353F9F1C4017CC16FD348B982ED47D
> STORED

You’ll need to do this quickly! As we timeout connections that don’t authenticate within a few seconds. Once authenticated, the full ASCII protocol is available to you.

Ruby

Start by adding the dalli gem to your Gemfile. Dalli is a Ruby memcache client.

gem 'dalli'

Then run bundle install:

$ bundle install

You can now start writing some code. First, you’ll need to create a client object with the correct credentials and settings:

require 'dalli'
cache = Dalli::Client.new((ENV["MEMCACHIER_SERVERS"] || "").split(","),
                    {:username => ENV["MEMCACHIER_USERNAME"],
                     :password => ENV["MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD"],
                     :failover => true,            # default is true
                     :socket_timeout => 1.5,       # default is 0.5
                     :socket_failure_delay => 0.2, # default is 0.01
                     :down_retry_delay => 60       # default is 60
                    })

Now you can use the cache through simple get and set operations, as well as many others.

cache.set("foo", "bar")
puts cache.get("foo")

Testing (Ruby)

The easiest way to test that your setup is working is through the heroku console:

$ heroku run console --app <app>
>> require 'dalli'
>> cache = Dalli::Client.new(ENV["MEMCACHIER_SERVERS"].split(","),
                        {:username => ENV["MEMCACHIER_USERNAME"],
                         :password => ENV["MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD"]
                        })
>> cache.set('memcachier', 'rocks')
=> true

And then fetch the value back:

>> cache.get('memcachier')
=> "rocks"

You can also get an insight into your cache usage (number of keys stored and bytes) with the stats command:

>> cache.stats
=> {"memcachier.example.net:11211" => {"cur_items" => "49982", "bytes" => "89982234"} }

Rails

We also have a tutorial on using MemCachier with Rails here.

Here we explain how you setup and install MemCachier with Rails. Refer to the Rails caching guide for information on how you use MemCachier with Rails. Rails supports automatic whole site caching, per-view caching and fragment caching.

Start by adding the dalli gem to your Gemfile. Dalli is a Ruby memcache client.

gem 'dalli'

Then run bundle install:

$ bundle install

Once this gem is installed you’ll want to configure the Rails cache_store appropriately. Modify your config/environments/production.rb with the following:

config.cache_store = :mem_cache_store,
                    (ENV["MEMCACHIER_SERVERS"] || "").split(","),
                    {:username => ENV["MEMCACHIER_USERNAME"],
                     :password => ENV["MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD"],
                     :failover => true,
                     :socket_timeout => 1.5,
                     :socket_failure_delay => 0.2,
                     :down_retry_delay => 60
                    }

From here you can use the following code examples to use the cache in your Rails app:

Rails.cache.write("foo", "bar")
puts Rails.cache.read("foo")

Testing (Rails)

To test locally you can simply use the rails console:

rails console
>> Rails.cache.write('memcachier', 'rocks')
=> true
>> Rails.cache.read('memcachier')
=> "rocks"

To test against MemCachier itself, refer to the Ruby testing instructions.

Rails 2

When adding the dalli gem to your Rails 2 Gemfile you will need to use dalli v1.0.5 as later versions of Dalli don’t support Rails 2.

gem 'dalli', '~>1.0.5'

Also modify config/environment.rb to contain:

config.gem 'dalli'

Else proceed just as newer Rails versions.

Ruby Puma Webserver

If you are using the Puma webserver for your Ruby app (Rails or otherwise), then you should take some additional steps due to the multi-threaded runtime being used. This applies to all threaded webservers for Ruby, not just Puma.

First, please refer to the documentation on Rails or Ruby appropriately, and then take these additional steps.

Dalli by default uses a single connection to each server. This works fine normally, but can become a bottleneck in a multi-threaded environment and limit performance. In this case, Dalli supports connection pooling, where multiple connections are created to MemCachier’s servers. To use this, start by adding the connection_pool gem to your Gemfile:

gem 'connection_pool'

Next, you’ll need to set the :pool_size configuration option when setting up Dalli. For example, in Rails your configuration would become:

config.cache_store = :mem_cache_store,
                    (ENV["MEMCACHIER_SERVERS"] || "").split(","),
                    {:username => ENV["MEMCACHIER_USERNAME"],
                     :password => ENV["MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD"],
                     :failover => true,
                     :socket_timeout => 1.5,
                     :socket_failure_delay => 0.2,
                     :down_retry_delay => 60,
                     :pool_size => 5
                    }

Where the number 5 should be chosen according to how many threads you will be running and the available concurrency on the machines running your webserver.

Rails Rack::Cache

Rails can use a middle-ware component of the Rack web server architecture called Rack::Cache. This provides caching of static assets in Rails and is a simple alternative to use a full CDN.

Please see this article for information.

Python

Here we explain how you setup and install MemCachier with Python.

Recommended client: python-binary-memcached

This is a pure python client that supports the binary protocol and SASL authentication.

To install python-binary-memcached:

$ pip install python-binary-memcached

Be sure to update your requirements.txt file with these new requirements (note that your versions may differ than what’s below):

python-binary-memcached==0.28.0

Next, configure your memcached client in the following way:

import bmemcached
import os

servers = os.environ.get('MEMCACHIER_SERVERS', '').split(',')
user = os.environ.get('MEMCACHIER_USERNAME', '')
passw = os.environ.get('MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD', '')

mc = bmemcached.Client(servers, username=user, password=passw)

mc.enable_retry_delay(True)  # Enabled by default. Sets retry delay to 5s.

After this, you can start writing cache code in your Python app:

mc.set("foo", "bar")
print(mc.get("foo"))

Alternative client: pylibmc

This client relies on the C libmemcached library. This should be fairly straight-forward to install with your package manager on Linux or Windows. We also have a blog post for Ubuntu users on how to do this. You only need to be concerned about this for local development, the Heroku platform includes libmemcached.

Once it’s installed, then install pylibmc:

$ pip install pylibmc

Be sure to update your requirements.txt file with these new requirements (note that your versions may differ than what’s below):

pylibmc==1.5.2

Next, configure your memcached client in the following way:

import pylibmc
import os

servers = os.environ.get('MEMCACHIER_SERVERS', '').split(',')
user = os.environ.get('MEMCACHIER_USERNAME', '')
passw = os.environ.get('MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD', '')

mc = pylibmc.Client(servers, binary=True,
                    username=user, password=passw,
                    behaviors={
                      # Faster IO
                      'tcp_nodelay': True,

                      # Keep connection alive
                      'tcp_keepalive': True,

                      # Timeout for set/get requests
                      'connect_timeout': 2000, # ms
                      'send_timeout': 750 * 1000, # us
                      'receive_timeout': 750 * 1000, # us
                      '_poll_timeout': 2000, # ms

                      # Better failover
                      'ketama': True,
                      'remove_failed': 1,
                      'retry_timeout': 2,
                      'dead_timeout': 30,
                    })

After this, you can start writing cache code in your Python app:

mc.set("foo", "bar")
print(mc.get("foo"))

Django

Here we explain how you setup and install MemCachier with Django. Please see the Django caching guide for how you effectively use MemCachier. Django supports whole site caching, per-view caching and fragement caching.

Recommended client: python-binary-memcached

MemCachier has been tested with the python-binary-memcached memcache client. This is a great client, fully-featured, high-performance and Python 2 & 3 support. Older Django versions require django-pylibmc to work with MemCachier. Please follow the instructions in this example if you wish to use an older version.

Install django-bmemcached:

$ pip install django-bmemcached

Be sure to update your requirements.txt file with these new requirements (note that your versions may differ than what’s below):

django-bmemcached==0.2.4

Next, configure your settings.py file the following way:

servers = os.environ['MEMCACHIER_SERVERS']
username = os.environ['MEMCACHIER_USERNAME']
password = os.environ['MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD']

CACHES = {
    'default': {
        # Use django-bmemcached
        'BACKEND': 'django_bmemcached.memcached.BMemcached',

        # TIMEOUT is not the connection timeout! It's the default expiration
        # timeout that should be applied to keys! Setting it to `None`
        # disables expiration.
        'TIMEOUT': None,

        'LOCATION': servers,

        'OPTIONS': {
            'username': username,
            'password': password,
        }
    }
}

After this, you can start writing cache code in your Django app:

from django.core.cache import cache
cache.set("foo", "bar")
print cache.get("foo")

Alternative client: pylibmc

MemCachier has been tested with the pylibmc memcache client. This is a great client, fully-featured, high-performance and Python 2 & 3 support. As of Version 1.11 Django has out-of-the-box support for pylibmc. Older Django versions require django-pylibmc to work with MemCachier. Please follow the instructions in this example if you wish to use an older version.

The pylibmc client relies on the C libmemcached library. This should be fairly straight-forward to install with your package manager on Linux or Windows. For macOS users, Homebrew provides an easy solution. We also have a blog post for Ubuntu users on how to do this. You only need to be concerned about this for local development, the Heroku platform includes libmemcached.

Once libmemcached is installed, then install pylibmc:

$ pip install pylibmc

Be sure to update your requirements.txt file with these new requirements (note that your versions may differ than what’s below):

pylibmc==1.5.1

Next, configure your settings.py file the following way:

servers = os.environ['MEMCACHIER_SERVERS']
username = os.environ['MEMCACHIER_USERNAME']
password = os.environ['MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD']

CACHES = {
    'default': {
        # Use pylibmc
        'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.memcached.PyLibMCCache',

        # TIMEOUT is not the connection timeout! It's the default expiration
        # timeout that should be applied to keys! Setting it to `None`
        # disables expiration.
        'TIMEOUT': None,

        'LOCATION': servers,

        'OPTIONS': {
            # Use binary memcache protocol (needed for authentication)
            'binary': True,
            'username': username,
            'password': password,
            'behaviors': {
                # Enable faster IO
                'no_block': True,
                'tcp_nodelay': True,

                # Keep connection alive
                'tcp_keepalive': True,

                # Timeout settings
                'connect_timeout': 2000, # ms
                'send_timeout': 750 * 1000, # us
                'receive_timeout': 750 * 1000, # us
                '_poll_timeout': 2000, # ms

                # Better failover
                'ketama': True,
                'remove_failed': 1,
                'retry_timeout': 2,
                'dead_timeout': 30,
            }
        }
    }
}

After this, you can start writing cache code in your Django app:

from django.core.cache import cache
cache.set("foo", "bar")
print cache.get("foo")

Template fragment caching

Django allows you to cache rendered template fragments. To enable fragment caching, add {% load cache %} to the top of each template caching is used in. The control statement to cache a fragment has the form {% cache timeout key ... %} where all additional parameters after the key are just appended to the key. In practice this may look as follows:

{% load cache %}
<!-- ... -->

<!-- Fragment caching example -->
{% for item in list %}
  {% cache None 'item-fragment' item.id %}
  <div>
    <!-- fragment that does something with the item -->
  </div>
  {% endcache %}
{% endfor %}

Here the timeout is None, but it can also be a variable that contains a time or an integer denoting seconds.

The cached snippet from the above example can be invalidated (deleted) as follows:

from django.core.cache import cache
from django.core.cache.utils import make_template_fragment_key
key = make_template_fragment_key("item-fragment", vary_on=[str(item.id)])
cache.delete(key)

View caching

Django also provides a decorator to cache views:

from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from django.views.decorators.cache import cache_page
# ...

timeout = 600 # 10 min

@cache_page(timeout)
def index(request):
  # ...
  return render_template('index.html', ...)

If a cached view ever has to be invalidated explicitly, the key to the view needs to be saved:

from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from django.views.decorators.cache import cache_page
from django.utils.cache import learn_cache_key
# ...

timeout = None
view_keys = {}

@cache_page(timeout)
def index(request):
  # ...
  response = render_template('index.html', ...)
  view_keys['index'] = learn_cache_key(request, response)
  return response

Now the view can be invalidated with:

from django.core.cache import cache
cache.delete(view_keys['index'])

Session storage

Memcache works well for storing information for short-lived sessions that time out. However, because Memcache is a cache and therefore not persistent, long-lived sessions are better suited to permanent storage options, such as your database.

For short-lived sessions configure SESSION_ENGINE to use the cache backend in django_tasklist/settings.py:

SESSION_ENGINE = 'django.contrib.sessions.backends.cache'

For long-lived sessions Django allows you to use a write-through cache, backed by a database. This is the best option for performance while guaranteeing persistence. To use the write-through cache, configure the SESSION_ENGINE in django_tasklist/settings.py like so:

SESSION_ENGINE = 'django.contrib.sessions.backends.cached_db'

For more information on how to use sessions in Django, please see the Django Session Documentation

Flask

Here we explain how you setup and install MemCachier with Flask. While Flask has a built-in caching backend its features are limited to manual caching. For this reason we recommend you use the Flask-Caching package. Flask-Caching supports memoization, fragment caching (Jinja2 snippets), and whole view caching. For more details about how to use Flask-Caching please refer to its documentation

Flask-Caching requires the pylibmc client which relies on the C libmemcached library. This should be fairly straight-forward to install with your package manager on Linux or Windows. For macOS users, Homebrew provides an easy solution. We also have a blog post for Ubuntu users on how to do this. You only need to be concerned about this for local development, the Heroku platform includes libmemcached.

Once libmemcached is installed, then install Flask-Caching and pylibmc:

$ pip install Flask-Caching pylibmc

Be sure to update your requirements.txt file with these new requirements (note that your versions may differ than what’s below):

Flask-Caching==1.4.0
pylibmc==1.5.2

Next, configure your Flask app the following way:

import os
from flask import Flask
from flask_caching import Cache

cache = Cache()
app = Flask(__name__)

cache_servers = os.environ.get('MEMCACHIER_SERVERS')
if cache_servers == None:
    # Fall back to simple in memory cache (development)
    cache.init_app(app, config={'CACHE_TYPE': 'simple'})
else:
    cache_user = os.environ.get('MEMCACHIER_USERNAME') or ''
    cache_pass = os.environ.get('MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD') or ''
    cache.init_app(app,
        config={'CACHE_TYPE': 'SASLMemcachedCache',
                'CACHE_MEMCACHED_SERVERS': cache_servers.split(','),
                'CACHE_MEMCACHED_USERNAME': cache_user,
                'CACHE_MEMCACHED_PASSWORD': cache_pass,
                'CACHE_OPTIONS': { 'behaviors': {
                    # Faster IO
                    'tcp_nodelay': True,
                    # Keep connection alive
                    'tcp_keepalive': True,
                    # Timeout for set/get requests
                    'connect_timeout': 2000, # ms
                    'send_timeout': 750 * 1000, # us
                    'receive_timeout': 750 * 1000, # us
                    '_poll_timeout': 2000, # ms
                    # Better failover
                    'ketama': True,
                    'remove_failed': 1,
                    'retry_timeout': 2,
                    'dead_timeout': 30}}})

After this, you can start writing cache code in your Flask app:

cache.set("foo", "bar")
print cache.get("foo")

Function memoization

Flask-Caching provides a decorator to memoize functions. This basically means when the function is called, Flask-Cache will check if the result is in the cache and if it is not it will run the function and save the result to the cache. The memoize decorator works as follows:

@cache.memoize()
def run_expensive_computation(parameter):
    # ...
    return result

If you need to invalidate stale data you can either delete all memoized results for a function with cache.delete_memoized(run_expensive_computation) or a result for a specific parameter with cache.delete_memoized(run_expensive_computation, parameter).

View caching

Flask-Caching also provides a decorator to cache views:

@bp.route('/', methods=('GET',))
@cache.cached()
def index():
  # ...
  return render_template('index.html', ...)

The views are cached with a key of the form 'view/' + request.path. This is important to know if you ever need to invalidate a cached view. You can do that with cache.delete('view/'+path_of_stale_view)

Jinja2 snippet caching

Flask-Caching provides a Jinja2 control flow statement to cache snippets. The statement has the form {% cache timeout, key, ... %} where all additional parameters after the key are just appended to the key. In practice this may look as follows:

<!-- Snippet caching example -->
{% for item in list %}
  {% cache None, 'item', item['id']|string %}
  <div>
    <!-- Jinja2 snippet that does something with the item -->
  </div>
  {% endcache %}
{% endfor %}

Here the timeout is None but it can also be a variable that contains a time or an integer denoting seconds.

The cached snippet from the above example can be invalidated (deleted) as follows:

from flask_caching import make_template_fragment_key
key = make_template_fragment_key('item', vary_on=[str(item.id)])
cache.delete(key)

Session caching

Memcache works well for storing information for short-lived sessions that time out. However, because Memcache is a cache and therefore not persistent, long-lived sessions are better suited to permanent storage options, such as your database.

To store sessions in Memcache, you need Flask-Session.

$ pip install Flask-Session pylibmc

Be sure to update your requirements.txt file with these new requirements (note that your versions may differ than what’s below):

Flask-Session==0.3.1
pylibmc==1.5.2

Now, configure Flask-Session:

import os
import pylibmc
from flask import Flask
from flask_session import Session

app = Flask(__name__)

servers = os.environ.get('MEMCACHIER_SERVERS').split(',')
username = os.environ.get('MEMCACHIER_USERNAME')
passwd = os.environ.get('MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD')

app.config.from_mapping(
    SESSION_TYPE = 'memcached',
    SESSION_MEMCACHED =
        pylibmc.Client(cache_servers.split(','), binary=True,
                       username=cache_user, password=cache_pass,
                       behaviors={
                            # Faster IO
                            'tcp_nodelay': True,
                            # Keep connection alive
                            'tcp_keepalive': True,
                            # Timeout for set/get requests
                            'connect_timeout': 2000, # ms
                            'send_timeout': 750 * 1000, # us
                            'receive_timeout': 750 * 1000, # us
                            '_poll_timeout': 2000, # ms
                            # Better failover
                            'ketama': True,
                            'remove_failed': 1,
                            'retry_timeout': 2,
                            'dead_timeout': 30,
                       })
)
Session(app)

You can now use sessions in your app like so:

from flask import session
session['key'] = 'value'
session.get('key', 'not set')

PHP

PHP Memcached Client

We recommended you use the PHP Memcached client to connect with MemCachier. It supports the full protocol and has great performance.

The memcached client is not a pure PHP client but a PECL extension that makes use of libmemcached. You thus need to install the memcached PECL extension via your OS package manager. In older operating systems you have to make sure libmemcached has SASL authentication support enabled but for newer operating systems such as Ubuntu 16.04 this is the default. After the installation you need to uncomment ;extension=memcached.so in /etc/php/conf.d/memcached.ini for the extension to work. On Heroku this dependency is already installed and configured.

First, you’ll need to modify your composer.json file to include the module:

{
    "require": {
        "php": ">=5.3.2",
        "ext-memcached": "*"
    }
}

Next, ensure that your new requirements are “frozen” to composer.lock by running:

$ composer update

For more information on enabling the extension and potential troubleshooting (e.g. when you don’t have the memcached extension available on your local computer), refer to the using optional extensions extensions section of Heroku’s PHP reference documentation.

Then, you can connect to MemCachier using the client:

require 'vendor/autoload.php';

// create a new persistent client
$m = new Memcached("memcached_pool");
$m->setOption(Memcached::OPT_BINARY_PROTOCOL, TRUE);

// some nicer default options
// - nicer TCP options
$m->setOption(Memcached::OPT_TCP_NODELAY, TRUE);
$m->setOption(Memcached::OPT_NO_BLOCK, FALSE);
// - timeouts
$m->setOption(Memcached::OPT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT, 2000);    // ms
$m->setOption(Memcached::OPT_POLL_TIMEOUT, 2000);       // ms
$m->setOption(Memcached::OPT_RECV_TIMEOUT, 750 * 1000); // us
$m->setOption(Memcached::OPT_SEND_TIMEOUT, 750 * 1000); // us
// - better failover
$m->setOption(Memcached::OPT_DISTRIBUTION, Memcached::DISTRIBUTION_CONSISTENT);
$m->setOption(Memcached::OPT_LIBKETAMA_COMPATIBLE, TRUE);
$m->setOption(Memcached::OPT_RETRY_TIMEOUT, 2);
$m->setOption(Memcached::OPT_SERVER_FAILURE_LIMIT, 1);
$m->setOption(Memcached::OPT_AUTO_EJECT_HOSTS, TRUE);

// setup authentication
$m->setSaslAuthData( getenv("MEMCACHIER_USERNAME")
                   , getenv("MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD") );

// We use a consistent connection to memcached, so only add in the
// servers first time through otherwise we end up duplicating our
// connections to the server.
if (!$m->getServerList()) {
    // parse server config
    $servers = explode(",", getenv("MEMCACHIER_SERVERS"));
    foreach ($servers as $s) {
        $parts = explode(":", $s);
        $m->addServer($parts[0], $parts[1]);
    }
}

You should look at the PHP Memcached client documentation for a list of API calls you can make against MemCachier.

PHP Session Support

You can configure PHP to store sessions in MemCachier as follows.

First, start by configuring an appropriate .user.ini in your document root (see heroku ini guide). It should contain the following:

session.save_handler=memcached
memcached.sess_sasl_username=${MEMCACHIER_USERNAME}
memcached.sess_sasl_password=${MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD}

; PHP >=7
memcached.sess_binary_protocol=1
session.save_path="${MEMCACHIER_SERVERS}"
memcached.sess_persistent=On

; PHP 5 (uncomment the following and replace PHP 7 section above)
;memcached.sess_binary=1
;session.save_path="PERSISTENT=myapp_session ${MEMCACHIER_SERVERS}"

In your code you should then be able to run:

// Enable MemCachier session support
session_start();
$_SESSION['test'] = 42;

Alternative PHP Client – MemcacheSASL

You should first install the PHPMemcacheSASL client. You can either grab the code directly or use composer for package management. We suggest composer.

First, if using composer, you’ll need to modify your composer.json file to include the module:

{
    "require": {
        "php": ">=5.3.2",
        "memcachier/php-memcache-sasl": ">=1.0.1"
    }
}

Then, you can connect to MemCachier using the client:

require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use MemCachier\MemcacheSASL;

// Create client
$m = new MemcacheSASL();
$servers = explode(",", getenv("MEMCACHIER_SERVERS"));
foreach ($servers as $s) {
    $parts = explode(":", $s);
    $m->addServer($parts[0], $parts[1]);
}

// Setup authentication
$m->setSaslAuthData( getenv("MEMCACHIER_USERNAME")
                   , getenv("MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD") );

// Test client
$m->add("foo", "bar");
echo $m->get("foo");

Laravel

As of Laravel 5.3, memcached is supported out of the box with the php-memcached PECL extension. Instructions on how to install php-memcached can be found here. Older versions of Laravel require laravel-memcached-plus for memcached integration.

Before setting up memcached as your default cache we need to add the dependency to composer.json:

$ composer require ext-memcached

Then we need to config the cache in config/cache.php:

'memcached' => [
    'driver' => 'memcached',
    'persistent_id' => 'memcached_pool_id',
    'sasl' => [
        env('MEMCACHIER_USERNAME'),
        env('MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD'),
    ],
    'options' => [
        // some nicer default options
        // - nicer TCP options
        Memcached::OPT_TCP_NODELAY => TRUE,
        Memcached::OPT_NO_BLOCK => FALSE,
        // - timeouts
        Memcached::OPT_CONNECT_TIMEOUT => 2000,    // ms
        Memcached::OPT_POLL_TIMEOUT => 2000,       // ms
        Memcached::OPT_RECV_TIMEOUT => 750 * 1000, // us
        Memcached::OPT_SEND_TIMEOUT => 750 * 1000, // us
        // - better failover
        Memcached::OPT_DISTRIBUTION => Memcached::DISTRIBUTION_CONSISTENT,
        Memcached::OPT_LIBKETAMA_COMPATIBLE => TRUE,
        Memcached::OPT_RETRY_TIMEOUT => 2,
        Memcached::OPT_SERVER_FAILURE_LIMIT => 1,
        Memcached::OPT_AUTO_EJECT_HOSTS => TRUE,

    ],
    'servers' => array_map(function($s) {
        $parts = explode(":", $s);
        return [
            'host' => $parts[0],
            'port' => $parts[1],
            'weight' => 100,
        ];
      }, explode(",", env('MEMCACHIER_SERVERS', 'localhost:11211')))
],

For Laravel to use memcached as its cache you will need to set the CACHE_DRIVER environment variable:

$ heroku config:set CACHE_DRIVER=memcached

Note, if you prefer you may also configure memcached to be your default cache driver in config/cache.php:

'default' => env('CACHE_DRIVER', 'memcached'),

For more information on how to use the cache in Laravel, we recommend you consult the Laravel caching documentation or our Laravel tutorial.

Use memcached for session storage

Memcached works well for sessions that time out, however, since memcached is a cache and thus not persistent, saving long-lived sessions in memcached might not be ideal. For long-lived sessions consider a permanent storage option such as you database.

Changing the session store from a file (default) to memcached can be done easily by just setting an environment variable:

$ heroku config:set SESSION_DRIVER=memcached

Caching rendered partials

With the help of laravel-partialcache you can also cache rendered partials in Laravel. This is essentially the same as fragment caching in Ruby on Rails. If you have complex partials in your application it is a good idea to cache them because rendering HTML can be a CPU intensive task.

You can add this dependency to your Laravel project with

$ composer require spatie/laravel-partialcache

and it will give you the @cache blade directive. It works just like the @include directive with a few added parameters.

For example,

@cache('my-complex.partial', ['data' => $data], null, $data->id)

will include my-complex.partial, pass it $data with the identifier data and cache it forever (null) and add $data->id to the cache key.

You can invalidate this cached partial with from your code with PartialCache::forget('my-complex.partial', $data->id);.

Caching entire reponses

In Laravel it is also easy to cache the entire rendered HTML response by using laravel-responsecache. This is essentially the same as view caching in Ruby on Rails. This package is easy to use and has good documentation in it’s README. To use this package with memcached you have to set the environment variable RESPONSE_CACHE_DRIVER to memcached.

Symfony2

The Symfony2 framework is a great choice with Heroku and MemCachier. It supports caching and storing sessions in Memcache.

First, start by configuring an appropriate .user.ini in your document root (see heroku ini guide). It should contain the following:

session.save_handler=memcached
memcached.sess_binary=1
session.save_path="PERSISTENT=myapp_session ${MEMCACHIER_SERVERS}"
memcached.sess_sasl_username=${MEMCACHIER_USERNAME}
memcached.sess_sasl_password=${MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD}

CakePHP

The CakePHP framework has excellent support for caching and can be easily used with MemCachier as the provider. To setup CakePHP with MemCachier, you’ll need to edit the file app/Config/bootstrap.php and add the following lines:

Cache::config('default', array(
    'engine' => 'Memcached',
    'prefix' => 'mc_',
    'duration' => '+7 days',
    'compress' => false,
    'persistent' => 'memcachier',
    'servers' => explode(',', getenv('MEMCACHIER_SERVERS')),
    'login' => getenv('MEMCACHIER_USERNAME'),
    'password' => getenv('MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD'),
    'serialize' => 'php'
));

After that, you should be able to use caching throughout your application like so:

class Post extends AppModel {

    public function newest() {
        $model = $this;
        return Cache::remember('newest_posts', function() use ($model){
            return $model->find('all', array(
                'order' => 'Post.updated DESC',
                'limit' => 10
            ));
        }, 'longterm');
    }
}

The above will fetch the value associated with the key newest_posts from the cache if it exists. Otherwise, it will execute the function and SQL query, storing the result in the cache using the newest_posts key.

You can find much more information on how to use caching with CakePHP here.

WordPress

Using MemCachier with the W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin

The W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin supports Memcached as a caching method. MemCachier is protocol-compliant with Memcached (and has several advantages over Memcached) so W3 Total Cache can be configured to use MemCachier to speed up your WordPress site.

Configuring W3 Total Cache to use MemCachier involves two steps:

1. Install the Memcached PHP extension.
2. Update the appropriate W3 Total Cache settings from WordPress Admin.

Install the Memcached PHP extension

First, check to see if the Memcached PHP extension is installed.

From the WordPress Admin left-hand menu, click Performance, then Dashboard. Then, from the W3 Total Cache dashboard, click compatibility check.

This will run a compatibility check for the various server modules and resources W3 Total Cache can make use of.

Notice, the Memcached PHP extension is shown as Not available, meaning it is not installed.

Next, install the Memcached PHP extension (not the Memcache extension). Make sure to install a version compatible with your installed version of PHP. Refer to the Compatibility Check results to see your PHP version. In the screenshot 8.0.28 is shown. If the PHP version you see is different, find a compatible extension version and install the appropriate extension version:

Install the Memcached PHP extension with your OS package manager. For example, to install the extension on Ubuntu, run the following command:

sudo apt-get install -y php8.0-memcached

Restart your web server.

Once that is complete, refresh your WordPress Admin browser window and click Compatibility Check again. The Memcached extension should now show as Installed.

W3 Total Cache can now use Memcached as a caching method.

Update W3 Total Cache Settings to use Memcached

To view the W3 Total Cache settings, click Performance on the WordPress Admin left sidebar menu. When you do this for the first time, you’ll be redirected to the W3 Total Cache Setup Guide. For now, click Skip at the bottom of that page. You can rerun it anytime by clicking Setup Guide from the Performance sub-menu.

Next, update the appropriate W3 Total Cache settings from WordPress Admin to use your MemCachier cache as its Memcached caching method.

Memcached can be used as a caching method for the following W3 Total Cache features:

• Page Cache
• Minify
• Database Cache
• Object Cache
• Fragment Cache (available with W3 Total Cache Pro paid plugin)

Configuring each one involves the same two steps:

1. Enable the feature, selecting Memcached as the caching method.
2. Configure the feature to use your MemCachier cache.

In the following section, you’ll configure the Object Cache. As mentioned, other Memcached-supported features require a very similar configuration process, so these following instructions should enable you to configure any of the other features.

Configuring the W3 Total Cache Object Cache

To enable the Object Cache, from the WordPress Admin left-hand menu, click Performance, then General Settings. Then, scroll down to the Object Cache settings.

Check the Enable checkbox to enable the object cache. Then, select Memcached and save settings.

Provided you con’t have a local Memcached server running, you’ll see the following warning:

The following memcached servers are not responding or not running:
Object Cache: 127.0.0.1:11211.
This message will automatically disappear once the issue is resolved.

This is because W3 Total Cache is configured by default to look for a Memcached server running on host 127.0.0.1 and port 11211.

Next, to configure your cache, click Performance, then Object Cache.

Under Advanced, enter your MemCachier cache’s server(s) in Memcached hostname:port / IP:port.

Then, enter your MemCachier cache’s username and password in Memcached username and Memcached password respectively.

Make sure Binary protocol is checked.

Finally, save the settings.

The W3 Total Cache Object Cache is now configured to use MemCachier. You’ll see the following notices at the top of the page:

Plugin configuration successfully updated.
Object caching via memcached is currently enabled

Note that a memcached testing bug was fixed in W3 Total Cache version 2.3.2, released on May 9, 2023.

The bug was related to testing Memcached using SASL authentication and would incorrectly show correctly configured and working caches as not working. When using older versions of the plugin, you will see the following notice after saving settings:

The following memcached servers are not responding or not running:
Object Cache: your_server.memcachier.com:11211.
This message will automatically disappear once the issue is resolved.

Also, due to the same bug, if you clicked the Test button beside Memcached hostname:port / IP:port, you would get an error notification, Test Failed.

Update the W3 Total Cache plugin to the latest version, and those errors will disappear.

Check Memcached is working

To verify you cache is working, check your MemCachier Analytics dashboard.

To access your application’s analytics dashboard run:

$ heroku addons:open memcachier

Notice the stats change when you refresh your WordPress website. On the All Time Stats card, you’ll see misses increase initially as items are missed, then stored in your cache. Then, you’ll see hits increase as those items are served from the cache.

WP Object Cache

Another way to use MemCachier with WordPress is with our WordPress Object Cache backend. It integrates the MemCachier caching service with WP Object Cache.

Note, the W3 Total Cache plugin features object caching, so there is no need to use this technique if you are using that plugin. In fact, it would likely be problematic to do so.

If you still want to use WP Object Cache instead of W3 Total Cache, see our tutorial Build a WordPress One-Click application on DigitalOcean and scale it with Memcache. The tutorial uses DigitalOcean as hosting but the WP Object Cache installation part is generally applicable.

Node.js

For Node.js we recommend the use of the memjs client library. It is written and supported by MemCachier itself! To install, use npm:

$ npm install memjs

Using it is straight-forward as memjs understands the MEMCACHIER_SERVERS, MEMCACHIER_USERNAME and MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD environment variables that the MemCachier add-on setups. For example:

var memjs = require('memjs')

var mc = memjs.Client.create(process.env.MEMCACHIER_SERVERS, {
  failover: true,  // default: false
  timeout: 1,      // default: 0.5 (seconds)
  keepAlive: true  // default: false
})

mc.set('hello', 'memcachier', {expires:0}, function(err, val) {
  if(err != null) {
    console.log('Error setting value: ' + err)
  }
})

mc.get('hello', function(err, val) {
  if(err != null) {
    console.log('Error getting value: ' + err)
  }
  else {
    console.log(val.toString('utf8'))
  }
})

Java

For Java we recommend using the XMemcached client. There is also the SpyMemcached client which we have recommended in the past. Many MemCachier customers reported problems with SpyMemcached in the presence of network issues. SpyMemcached seems to have trouble coping with connection timeouts or resets. For this reason we now recommend XMemcached.

We also recommend using Apache Maven or Gradle as a build tool. Here we show the dependency configuration for Maven but they are similar for Gradle. If you aren’t using Maven or Gradle and are instead using Apache Ant or your own build system, then simply add the xmemcached or spymemcached jar file as a dependency of your application.

XMemcached

To use XMemcached with Maven you need to add the xmemcached library to your dependencies in your pom.xml file:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.googlecode.xmemcached</groupId>
  <artifactId>xmemcached</artifactId>
  <version>2.4.3</version>
</dependency>

Once your build system is configured, you can start adding caching to your Java app:

import net.rubyeye.xmemcached.MemcachedClient;
import net.rubyeye.xmemcached.MemcachedClientBuilder;
import net.rubyeye.xmemcached.XMemcachedClientBuilder;
import net.rubyeye.xmemcached.auth.AuthInfo;
import net.rubyeye.xmemcached.command.BinaryCommandFactory;
import net.rubyeye.xmemcached.exception.MemcachedException;
import net.rubyeye.xmemcached.utils.AddrUtil;

import java.lang.InterruptedException;
import java.net.InetSocketAddress;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeoutException;

public class App {
  public static void main( String[] args ) {
    List<InetSocketAddress> servers =
      AddrUtil.getAddresses(System.getenv("MEMCACHIER_SERVERS").replace(",", " "));
    AuthInfo authInfo =
      AuthInfo.plain(System.getenv("MEMCACHIER_USERNAME"),
                     System.getenv("MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD"));

    MemcachedClientBuilder builder = new XMemcachedClientBuilder(servers);

    // Configure SASL auth for each server
    for(InetSocketAddress server : servers) {
      builder.addAuthInfo(server, authInfo);
    }

    // Use binary protocol
    builder.setCommandFactory(new BinaryCommandFactory());
    // Connection timeout in milliseconds (default: )
    builder.setConnectTimeout(1000);
    // Reconnect to servers (default: true)
    builder.setEnableHealSession(true);
    // Delay until reconnect attempt in milliseconds (default: 2000)
    builder.setHealSessionInterval(2000);

    try {
      MemcachedClient mc = builder.build();
      try {
        mc.set("foo", 0, "bar");
        String val = mc.get("foo");
        System.out.println(val);
      } catch (TimeoutException te) {
        System.err.println("Timeout during set or get: " +
                           te.getMessage());
      } catch (InterruptedException ie) {
        System.err.println("Interrupt during set or get: " +
                           ie.getMessage());
      } catch (MemcachedException me) {
        System.err.println("Memcached error during get or set: " +
                           me.getMessage());
      }
    } catch (IOException ioe) {
      System.err.println("Couldn't create a connection to MemCachier: " +
                         ioe.getMessage());
    }
  }
}

You may wish to look the xmemcached Wiki or JavaDocs.

SpyMemcached

To use SpyMemcached with Maven you need to add the spymemcached library to your dependencies in your pom.xml file:

<dependency>
  <groupId>spy</groupId>
  <artifactId>spymemcached</artifactId>
  <version>2.12.3</version>
  <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

Once your build system is configured, you can start adding caching to your Java app:

import java.io.IOException;
import net.spy.memcached.AddrUtil;
import net.spy.memcached.MemcachedClient;
import net.spy.memcached.ConnectionFactoryBuilder;
import net.spy.memcached.auth.PlainCallbackHandler;
import net.spy.memcached.auth.AuthDescriptor;

public class Foo {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    AuthDescriptor ad = new AuthDescriptor(
        new String[] { "PLAIN" },
        new PlainCallbackHandler(System.getenv("MEMCACHIER_USERNAME"),
                                 System.getenv("MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD")));
    try {
      MemcachedClient mc = new MemcachedClient(
          new ConnectionFactoryBuilder()
              .setProtocol(ConnectionFactoryBuilder.Protocol.BINARY)
              .setAuthDescriptor(ad).build(),
          AddrUtil.getAddresses(System.getenv("MEMCACHIER_SERVERS")));

      mc.set("foo", 0, "bar");
      System.out.println(mc.get("foo"));
    } catch (IOException ioe) {
      System.err.println("Couldn't create a connection to MemCachier: \nIOException "
              + ioe.getMessage());
    }
  }
}

For convenience, you may want to set the above code up as a new MemCachierClient class:

package com.memcachier.examples.java;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.InetSocketAddress;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import javax.security.auth.callback.CallbackHandler;

import net.spy.memcached.ConnectionFactory;
import net.spy.memcached.ConnectionFactoryBuilder;
import net.spy.memcached.MemcachedClient;
import net.spy.memcached.auth.AuthDescriptor;
import net.spy.memcached.auth.PlainCallbackHandler;

public class MemCachierClient extends MemcachedClient {

   public MemCachierClient(String username, String password, String servers) throws IOException {
       this(new SASLConnectionFactoryBuilder().build(username, password), getAddresses(servers));
   }

   public MemCachierClient(ConnectionFactory cf, List<InetSocketAddress> addrs) throws IOException {
       super(cf, addrs);
   }

   private static List<InetSocketAddress> getAddresses(String servers) {
       List<InetSocketAddress> addrList = new ArrayList<InetSocketAddress>();
       for (String server : servers.split(",")) {
           String addr = server.split(":")[0];
           int port = Integer.parseInt(server.split(":")[1]);
           addrList.add(new InetSocketAddress(addr, port));
       }
       return addrList;
   }
}

class SASLConnectionFactoryBuilder extends ConnectionFactoryBuilder {
   public ConnectionFactory build(String username, String password){
       CallbackHandler ch = new PlainCallbackHandler(username, password);
       AuthDescriptor ad = new AuthDescriptor(new String[]{"PLAIN"}, ch);
       this.setProtocol(Protocol.BINARY);
       this.setAuthDescriptor(ad);
       return this.build();
   }
}

You may wish to look the spymemcached JavaDocs or some more example code to help in using MemCachier effectively. There is also a guide on using WebRunner, Heroku’s framework to handle sessions with MemCachier.

Spring Boot

In order to use memcache in Spring you can use simple-spring-memcached. It works with both, the XMemcached (recommended) or the SpyMemcached client.

Simple Spring XMemcached

We recommend you use Simple Spring Memcached with the XMemcached client. In order to do so you need to add the respective dependencies to your pom.xml:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.google.code.simple-spring-memcached</groupId>
  <artifactId>xmemcached-provider</artifactId>
  <version>4.0.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>com.googlecode.xmemcached</groupId>
  <artifactId>xmemcached</artifactId>
  <version>2.4.3</version>
</dependency>

For version 4.0.0 of simple-spring-memcached it is important that you explicitly import XMemcached version 2.4.3 as it contains important bug fixes.

To configure Simple Spring Memcached with XMemcached, add the following configuration class to your application:

import java.net.InetSocketAddress;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.HashMap;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import com.google.code.ssm.CacheFactory;
import com.google.code.ssm.config.AbstractSSMConfiguration;
import com.google.code.ssm.config.DefaultAddressProvider;
import com.google.code.ssm.providers.xmemcached.XMemcachedConfiguration;
import com.google.code.ssm.providers.xmemcached.MemcacheClientFactoryImpl;
import net.rubyeye.xmemcached.auth.AuthInfo;
import net.rubyeye.xmemcached.utils.AddrUtil;

@Configuration
public class MemCachierConfig extends AbstractSSMConfiguration {

  @Bean
  @Override
  public CacheFactory defaultMemcachedClient() {
    String serverString = System.getenv("MEMCACHIER_SERVERS").replace(",", " ");
    List<InetSocketAddress> servers = AddrUtil.getAddresses(serverString);
    AuthInfo authInfo = AuthInfo.plain(System.getenv("MEMCACHIER_USERNAME"),
                                       System.getenv("MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD"));
    Map<InetSocketAddress, AuthInfo> authInfoMap =
      new HashMap<InetSocketAddress, AuthInfo>();
    for(InetSocketAddress server : servers) {
      authInfoMap.put(server, authInfo);
    }

    final XMemcachedConfiguration conf = new XMemcachedConfiguration();
    conf.setUseBinaryProtocol(true);
    conf.setAuthInfoMap(authInfoMap);

    final CacheFactory cf = new CacheFactory();
    cf.setCacheClientFactory(new MemcacheClientFactoryImpl());
    cf.setAddressProvider(new DefaultAddressProvider(serverString));
    cf.setConfiguration(conf);
    return cf;
  }
}

Now you can use the Simple Spring Memcached annotations in your Spring application.

Simple Spring SpyMemcached

If you want to use Simple Spring Memcached with SpyMemcached you need to add the respective dependencies to your pom.xml:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.google.code.simple-spring-memcached</groupId>
  <artifactId>spymemcached-provider</artifactId>
  <version>4.0.0</version>
</dependency>

To configure Simple Spring Memcached with SpyMemcached, add the following configuration class to your application:

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import com.google.code.ssm.CacheFactory;
import com.google.code.ssm.config.AbstractSSMConfiguration;
import com.google.code.ssm.config.DefaultAddressProvider;
import com.google.code.ssm.providers.spymemcached.SpymemcachedConfiguration;
import com.google.code.ssm.providers.spymemcached.MemcacheClientFactoryImpl;
import net.spy.memcached.auth.AuthDescriptor;
import net.spy.memcached.auth.PlainCallbackHandler;

@Configuration
public class MemCachierConfig extends AbstractSSMConfiguration {

  @Bean
  @Override
  public CacheFactory defaultMemcachedClient() {
    String serverString = System.getenv("MEMCACHIER_SERVERS");
    AuthDescriptor ad = new AuthDescriptor(new String[] { "PLAIN" },
                new PlainCallbackHandler(System.getenv("MEMCACHIER_USERNAME"),
                                         System.getenv("MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD")));

    final SpymemcachedConfiguration conf = new SpymemcachedConfiguration();
    conf.setUseBinaryProtocol(true);
    conf.setAuthDescriptor(ad);

    final CacheFactory cf = new CacheFactory();
    cf.setCacheClientFactory(new MemcacheClientFactoryImpl());
    cf.setAddressProvider(new DefaultAddressProvider(serverString));
    cf.setConfiguration(conf);
    return cf;
  }
}

Now you can use the Simple Spring Memcached annotations in your Spring application.

Use Simple Spring Memcached annotations

To apply caching to functions Simple Spring Memcached provides three main types of annotations:

1. @ReadThrough*Cache tries to get a value from the cache. If it does not exist it will execute the function and store the return value in the cache to make sure it is available the next time the function is called.
2. @Invalidate*Cache deletes key value pairs from the cache.
3. @Update*Cache updates the values for stored keys.

Each type of annotation comes in 3 flavors (to replace the * above):

1. Single applies the caching method to a single key that is specified by a parameter of the annotated function marked with the @ParameterValueKeyProvider annotation.
2. Multi applies the caching method to a collection of keys and works the same as Single but the annotated parameter needs to be a Collection.
3. Assign applies the caching method to an assigned key defined within the annotation.

These 9 annotations are the meat of Simple Spring Memacached but it offers more annotations to aid your caching needs. For more information consult the Simple Spring Memcached documentation.

Some examples

• Probably the most used annotation is @ReadThroughSingleCache. It caches the result of complex computation with a key depending on the namespace and the input value. The cached value never expires.

  @ReadThroughSingleCache(namespace = "ComplexComuptation", expiration = 0)
  public ComplexSerializableResult compute(@ParameterValueKeyProvider Long input) {
    // ...
    return result;
  }

• It is important to delete stale data and @InvalidateAssignCache does exactely that for a given key:

  @InvalidateAssignCache(namespace = "TableA", assignedKey = "SumOfColumnX")
  public void saveValueToTableA(TableAObject value) {
    //...
  }

More examples can be found in the Simple Spring Memcached documentation.

Use Spring Caching integration

Spring also has native caching annotations and simple-spring-memcached can be configured so Spring’s integrated caching is backed by memcache. While it is a good idea to use Spring’s caching integration if you want the flexibility to change the underlying store at any time, we generally recommend using the annotations provided by Simple Spring Memcached as they are specifically designed to be used with Memcache.

Enabling memcache for Spring’s cache integration requires an additional dependency in your pom.xml file:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.google.code.simple-spring-memcached</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-cache</artifactId>
  <version>4.0.0</version>
</dependency>

To use these annotations you need create a CacheManager bean and set the @EnableCaching annotation. Concretely, extend the MemCachierConfig shown above as follows:

// ...
import java.util.Arrays;
import org.springframework.cache.annotation.EnableCaching;
import org.springframework.cache.CacheManager;
import com.google.code.ssm.Cache;
import com.google.code.ssm.spring.ExtendedSSMCacheManager;
import com.google.code.ssm.spring.SSMCache;

@EnableCaching
@Configuration
public class MemCachierConfig extends AbstractSSMConfiguration {

  @Bean
  @Override
  public CacheFactory defaultMemcachedClient() {
    // ...
  }

  @Bean
  public CacheManager cacheManager() throws Exception {
    // Use SSMCacheManager instead of ExtendedSSMCacheManager if you do not
    // need to set per key expiration
    ExtendedSSMCacheManager cacheManager = new ExtendedSSMCacheManager();
    Cache cache = this.defaultMemcachedClient().getObject();
    // SSMCache(cache, 0, false) creates a cache with default key expiration
    // of 0 (no expiration) and flushing disabled (allowClear = false)
    cacheManager.setCaches(Arrays.asList(new SSMCache(cache, 0, false)));
    return cacheManager;
  }
}

Now you can use Spring’s caching annotations, most importantly @Cacheble, @CacheEvict, and @CachePut.

• @Cacheable performs similarly to the @ReadThrough*Cache annotations explained above: it tries to get a value from the cache but if unavailable, it will execute the function and store the result for future calls to this function with the given parameters.

  @Cacheable("default#3600")
  public ComplexSerializableResult compute(Long input) {
    // ...
    return result;
  }

@Cacheable does not have native support setting expiration times. However, if you use the ExtendedSSMCacheManager you can set an expriation time by appending #<seconds> to the cache name. The example above sets the expiration to one hour. Omitting this appendix falls back to the configured default expiration time.

• @CacheEvict deletes a value from the cache. This is important to get rid of stale data.

  @CacheEvict("default")
  public void updateValue(ValueId id) {
    //...
  }

• @CachePut allows you to add values to the cache and is a great way to optimize your cache. It supports the same options as the @Cacheable annotation.

  @CachePut("default")
  public Value updateValue(ValueId id) {
    //...
    return value;
  }

For more information on these caching annotations and their options consult Spring’s caching documentation and the Spring Caching Integration secion of the Simple Spring Memcached documentation.

Go

Here we explain how you setup and use MemCachier in Go.

We recommend the mc memcache client. It supports the binary protocol and SASL authentication and was specifically designed to work well with MemCachier. However, if you prefer to use gomemcache we have a fork of gomemcache that works with MemCachier.

Recommended client: mc

This client is supports the binary protocol and SASL authentication and is maintained by MemCachier. To install it run:

$ go get github.com/memcachier/mc

Next, configure your memcached client in the following way:

username := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_USERNAME")
password := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD")
server := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_SERVERS")

c := mc.NewMC(server, username, password)
defer c.Quit()

This will create a memcache client with default parameters. If you prefer, you can also configure the memcache client like so:

username := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_USERNAME")
password := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD")
server := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_SERVERS")

config := mc.DefaultConfig()
config.Hasher = mc.NewModuloHasher()         // default
config.Retries = 2                           // default
config.RetryDelay = 200 * time.Millisecond   // default
config.Failover = true                       // default
config.ConnectionTimeout = 2 * time.Second   // default
config.DownRetryDelay = 60 * time.Second     // default
config.PoolSize = 1                          // default
config.TcpKeepAlive = true                   // default
config.TcpKeepAlivePeriod = 60 * time.Second // default
config.TcpNoDelay = true                     // default
c := mc.NewMCwithConfig(server, username, password, config)
defer c.Quit()

After this, you can start writing cache code in your app:

exp := 0 // seconds if less than 30 days, unix timestamp if more
flags := 0
cas := 0
_, err := c.Set("foo", "bar", flags, exp, cas)
if err != nil {
    fmt.Printf("Failed to set value: %s\n", err)
}

val, _, _, err := c.Get("foo")
if err != nil {
    fmt.Printf("Failed to fetch value: %s\n", err)
}
fmt.Printf("Got value: %s\n", val)

Alternative client: gomemcache

We highly recommed to use the mc client since it was designed to work well with MemCachier but using gomemcache is also possilbe. While gomemcache is a popular memcache client it only supports the ASCII protocol. We have a fork that allows you to use this client with MemCachier anyway.

To install our version of gomemcache:

$ go get github.com/memcachier/gomemcache

Next, configure your memcached client in the following way:

username := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_USERNAME")
password := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD")
servers := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_SERVERS")

mc := memcache.New(strings.Split(servers, ",")...)
mc.SetAuth(username, []byte(password))

After this, you can start writing cache code in your app:

err := mc.Set(&memcache.Item{Key: "foo", Value: []byte("my value")})
if err != nil {
    fmt.Printf("Failed to set value: %s\n", err)
}

val, err := mc.Get("foo")
if err != nil {
    fmt.Printf("Failed to fetch value: %s\n", err)
}
fmt.Printf("Got value: %s\n", val)

Gin

In Gin you can use the standard mc interface to get and set values as described in our Go documentation to cache results of expensive computations or database queries:

package main

import (
  "os"
  "fmt"
  "github.com/memcachier/mc"
)

func main() {
  username := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_USERNAME")
  password := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD")
  servers := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_SERVERS")

  mcClient := mc.NewMC(servers, username, password)
  defer mcClient.Quit()

  _, err := mcClient.set("foo", "bar", 0, 0, 0)
  if err != nil {
    fmt.Printf("Failed to set value: %s\n", err)
  }

  val, _, _, err := c.Get("foo")
  if err != nil {
    fmt.Printf("Failed to fetch value: %s\n", err)
  }
  fmt.Printf("Got value: %s\n", val)
}

In addition there are two Gin specific ways to use Memcache:

1. Cache rendered views
2. Store sessions

Cache rendered views

To cache rendered views you need the gin-contrib/cache library. Now you can use the CachePage middleware like so:

package main

import (
  "os"
  "github.com/gin-gonic/gin"
  "github.com/gin-contrib/cache"
  "github.com/gin-contrib/cache/persistence"
)

func main() {
    username := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_USERNAME")
  password := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD")
  servers := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_SERVERS")

  mcStore := persistence.NewMemcachedBinaryStore(servers, username, password, persistence.FOREVER)

    router := gin.New()
  router.GET("/", cache.CachePage(mcStore, persistence.DEFAULT, func(c *gin.Context) {
    // ...
  }))
}

Whenever the view changes, e.g., when the content changes, you need to make sure to invalidate the cached view so it will be re-rendered. This can be done by deleting the cached item (for the root route in this case):

mcStore.Delete(cache.CreateKey("/"))

Storing Sessions in Memcache

On Heroku it is a good idea to store sessions in Memcache instead of in a file on disk for two reasons:

1. Dynos only have an ephemeral filesystem that is not persisted across restarts.
2. You might have multiple dynos which will not share the same ephemeral filesystem.

Memcache works well for sessions that time out, however, since Memcache is a cache and thus not persistent, saving long-lived sessions in Memcache might not be ideal. For long-lived sessions consider a permanent storage option such as your database.

To use sessions in Gin you need gin-contrib/session. You can easily add it to your Gin app like so:

package main

import (
  "os"
  "github.com/memcachier/mc"
  "github.com/gin-contrib/sessions"
  "github.com/gin-contrib/sessions/memcached"
)

func main() {
    username := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_USERNAME")
  password := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD")
  servers := os.Getenv("MEMCACHIER_SERVERS")

  mcClient := mc.NewMC(servers, username, password)
  defer mcClient.Quit()

    router := gin.New()
  sessionStore := memcached.NewMemcacheStore(mcClient, "", []byte("secret"))
  router.Use(sessions.Sessions("mysession", sessionStore))
}

Rust

For Rust we recommend the use of the memcached-rs client library. Since version 0.4 it supports SASL authentication and can be used to connect to MemCachier.

Using memcached-rs requires the MEMCACHIER_SERVERS, MEMCACHIER_USERNAME and MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD environment variables that the MemCachier add-on setups.

The setup looks as follows:

extern crate memcached;

use std::env;

use memcached::proto::{Operation, ProtoType};
use memcached::Client;

fn main() {
    let servers = env::var("MEMCACHIER_SERVERS").unwrap();
    let username = env::var("MEMCACHIER_USERNAME").unwrap();
    let password = env::var("MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD").unwrap();


    let mut client = Client::connect_sasl(servers.split(',').map(|s| format!("{}{}", "tcp://", s))
                                                            .map(|s| (s, 1))
                                                            .collect::<Vec<(String, usize)>>()
                                                            .as_slice(),
                                          ProtoType::Binary,
                                          &username, &password).unwrap();

    client.set(b"hello", b"MemCachier", 0xdeadbeef, 2).unwrap();
    let (value, flags) = client.get(b"hello").unwrap();


    println!("Got: {}", std::str::from_utf8(&value).unwrap());
    assert_eq!(&value[..], b"MemCachier");
    assert_eq!(flags, 0xdeadbeef);
}

Client library support

MemCachier will work with any memcached binding that supports SASL authentication and the binary protocol. In the following you can find a list of all clients known to us including a description of their most important features. This list is by no means exhaustive and if you know of a client not on this list, don’t hesitate to contact us. All clients marked as supported have been tested with our service.

Clojure

Go

¹ We have a fork that does ASCII auth and an outstanding PR in the main repository. ² A high performance fork of gomemcache.

Haskell

Java

Node.js

PHP

¹ Requires libmemcached.

Python

¹ Requires libmemcached which in turn requires libsasl2-modules for session caching support with SASL. ² C++ bindings.

Ruby

¹ Requires libmemcached.

Rust

Scala

Sample applications

We’ve built a number of working sample apps, too. Keep in mind they expect MEMCACHIER_SERVERS, MEMCACHIER_USERNAME, and MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD to be in the environment.

• Sinatra (Heroku)
• Rails (Heroku)
• Rack::Cache (Heroku)
• Django (Heroku)
• PHP (Heroku)
• Node.js (Heroku)
• Java (Heroku)
• Flask (Heroku)
• Gin (Heroku)
• Spring Boot (Heroku)
• Express.js (Heroku)
• Laravel (Heroku)

We also have a collection of example code that can be a useful reference source.

Local usage

To test your Heroku application locally, you will need to run a local memcached server. MemCachier can only run in Heroku, but because MemCachier and memcached speak the same protocol, you shouldn’t have any issues testing locally. Installation depends on your platform.

On Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt-get install memcached

On macOS (with Homebrew):

$ brew install memcached

For Windows you will need to build memcached from source.

For further information and resources (such as the memcached source code) please refer to the Memcached.org homepage

To run memcached simply execute the following command:

$ memcached -v

MemCachier Analytics

MemCachier analytics surfaces the most important metrics for you, so you can understand your cache’s performance at a glance.

The analytics dashboard enables developers to measure performance and troubleshoot issues for Memcached. Make sure your caching strategy is working as planned with unique insight into its performance.

To access your application’s analytics dashboard run:

$ heroku addons:open memcachier

MemCachier analytics are powered by CacheSight. See the CacheSight documentation for a detailed explanation of all of our analytics dashboard features.

All dashboard features are also available via our API

Analytics API V2

Note, you can also access features available on the analytics dashboard via the API.

• Authentication
• Info
• Credentials
  • List Credentials
  • Create Credentials
  • Update Credentials
  • Delete Credentials
  • Promote Credentials
• Management
  • Rotate SSO Token
  • Enable Cache
  • Switch Cluster
• Commands
  • Flush
  • Reset Stats
  • Get Stats
• Insight
  • Get Processed Stats Aggregate
  • Get Processed Stats Per Server
  • Get Latency
• Alerts
  • List Alerts
  • Create Alert
  • Get Alert
  • Update Alert
  • Delete Alert
  • List Delivery Configs
  • Create Delivery Config
  • Delete Delivery Config
• Introspection
  • Get Logs
  • Get Compound Stats
  • Get Popular Items
  • Get Key Stats
  • Get Watched Prefixes
  • Watch Prefix
  • Unwatch Prefix
  • Get Prefix Stats

Authentication

MemCachier uses credentials to allow access to the API. After you’ve created a cache, you can find your cache ID and credentials on the Settings page of your analytics dashboard . Only credentials that have the API capability will be allowed to use this API.

MemCachier expects for your credentials to be included in the header of all API requests.

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/<action> \
  --user <username>:<password>

Make sure to replace <username>:<password> and <cache_id> with your credential username and password, and your cache ID, found on the Settings page of your analytics dashboard.

Info

Returns all information relating to a cache. This includes cache, credential, and cluster related information.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/info

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/info \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

{
  "id": 4,
  "name": "ABCDEF",
  "label": "string",
  "cache_type": "memcachier",
  "plan": 26214400,
  "provider": "ec2",
  "enabled": true,
  "cluster_name": "string",
  "servers": [
    "string"
  ],
  "credentials": [
    {
      "id": 0,
      "cache_id": 0,
      "sasl_username": "string",
      "sasl_password": "pa$$word",
      "write_capability": true,
      "flush_capability": true,
      "api_capability": true,
      "primary": true
    }
  ],
  "can_switch": true,
  "can_manage_credentials": true,
  "can_update_capabilities": true
}

Credentials

List Credentials

The endpoint returns a list of all the credentials connected to the cache.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/credentials

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/credentials \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

[
  {
    "id": 0,
    "cache_id": 0,
    "sasl_username": "string",
    "sasl_password": "pa$$word",
    "write_capability": true,
    "flush_capability": true,
    "api_capability": true,
    "primary": true
  },
  // ...
]

Create Credentials

This endpoint creates a new set of credentials which can be used to connect to the cache.

Note, development caches cannot manage credentials.

HTTP Request

POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/credentials

Responses

Example

curl -X POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/credentials \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

{
  "id": 0,
  "cache_id": 0,
  "sasl_username": "string",
  "sasl_password": "pa$$word",
  "write_capability": true,
  "flush_capability": true,
  "api_capability": true,
  "primary": true
}

Update Credentials

This endpoint updates the capabilities of a specific set of credentials.

Note, sasl_username is your credential_username.

HTTP Request

PATCH https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/credentials/<credential_username>

Request Body

Note, if you omit a capability from the request body its value will be set to false.

{
  "write_capability": boolean,
  "flush_capability": boolean,
  "api_capability": boolean
}

Responses

Example

curl -X PATCH https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/credentials/<credential_username> \
  --user <username>:<password> \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"write_capability":true,"flush_capability":false,"api_capability":true}'

Returns

{
  "flush_capability": false,
  "write_capability": false,
  "api_capability": true,
}

Delete Credentials

This endpoint deletes a set of credentials.

HTTP Request

DELETE https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/credentials/<credential_username>

Responses

Example

curl -X DELETE https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/credentials/<credential_username> \
  --user <username>:<password>

Promote Credentials

This endpoint promotes a set of credentials to be your primary credentials.

HTTP Request

POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/credentials/primary/<credential_username>

Responses

Example

curl -X POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/credentials/primary/<credential_username> \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

{
  "id": 0,
  "cache_id": 0,
  "sasl_username": "string",
  "sasl_password": "pa$$word",
  "write_capability": true,
  "flush_capability": true,
  "api_capability": true,
  "primary": true
}

Management

Rotate SSO Token

Rotate SSO secret for analytics dashboard, invalidating dashboard URLs.

HTTP Request

POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/rotate_sso

Responses

Example

curl -X POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/rotate_sso \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

string

Enable Cache

Enable a disabled cache.

HTTP Request

POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/enable_cache

Responses

Example

curl -X POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/enable_cache \
  --user <username>:<password>

Switch Cluster

Switch to a different cluster.

HTTP Request

POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/switch_cluster

Responses

Example

curl -X POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/switch_cluster \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

New cluster name.

string

Commands

Flush

Flush the cache.

HTTP Request

POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/flush

Responses

Example

curl -X POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/flush \
  --user <username>:<password>

Reset Stats

Reset stats.

HTTP Request

POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/reset_stats

Responses

Example

curl -X POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/reset_stats \
  --user <username>:<password>

Get Stats

Get stats for a cache.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/stats

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/stats \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

{
  "auth_cmds": 0,
  "auth_errors": 0,
  "bytes": 0,
  "bytes_read": 0,
  "bytes_written": 0,
  "cas_badval": 0,
  "cas_hits": 0,
  "cas_misses": 0,
  "cmd_delete": 0,
  "cmd_flush": 0,
  "cmd_get": 0,
  "cmd_set": 0,
  "cmd_touch": 0,
  "curr_connections": 0,
  "curr_items": 0,
  "decr_hits": 0,
  "decr_misses": 0,
  "delete_hits": 0,
  "delete_misses": 0,
  "evictions": 0,
  "expired": 0,
  "get_hits": 0,
  "get_misses": 0,
  "incr_hits": 0,
  "incr_misses": 0,
  "limit_maxbytes": 0,
  "time": 0,
  "total_connections": 0,
  "total_items": 0,
  "touch_hits": 0,
  "touch_misses": 0
}

Insight

Get Processed Stats Aggregate

Get processed stats aggregate for all servers.

The granularity of the timeseries depends on the start and end time. Up to 24 hours gets 1 minute granularity, up to 1 week gets 10 minute granularity, up to 3 month gets hour granularity, and above that gets day granularity.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/insight/processed_stats

Query Parameters

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/insight/processed_stats?names=auth_cmds_rate,auth_errors_rate,bytes&startTime=2023-01-08T15:20:00Z&endTime=2023-01-10T15:20:00Z \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

[
  {
    "name": "processed_stats",
    "columns": [
      "time",
      "auth_cmds_rate",
      "auth_errors_rate",
      "bytes"
    ],
    "values": [
      [
        "2023-01-10T15:20:00Z",
        0,
        0,
        0
      ],
      ...
    ]
  }
]

Get Processed Stats Per Server

Get processed stats per server.

The granularity of the timeseries depends on the start and end time. Up to 24 hours gets 1 minute granularity, up to 1 week gets 10 minute granularity, up to 3 month gets hour granularity, and above that gets day granularity.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/insight/processed_stats/per_server

Query Parameters

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/insight/processed_stats/per_server?names=auth_cmds_rate,auth_errors_rate,bytes&startTime=2023-01-08T15:20:00Z&endTime=2023-01-10T15:20:00Z \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

[
  {
    "name": "processed_stats",
    "tags": {
      "server": "your.server.memcachier.com:11211"
    },
    "columns": [
      "time",
      "hit_rate",
      "bytes",
      "max_bytes"
    ],
    "values": [
      [
        "2023-01-10T15:20:00Z",
        0,
        0,
        0
      ],
      ...
    ]
  },
  ...
]

Get Latency

Get latency for cache in nanoseconds, grouped by server. The granularity of the timeseries depends on the start and end time. Up to 24 hours gets 20s granularity, up to 1 week gets 10 minute granularity, up to 3 month gets hour granularity, and above that gets day granularity.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/insight/latency

Query Parameters

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/insight/latency?startTime=2023-01-08T15:20:00Z&endTime=2023-01-10T15:20:00Z \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

[
  {
    "name": "latency",
    "tags": {
      "server": "your.server.memcachier.com:11211"
    },
    "columns": [
      "time",
      "duration"
    ],
    "values": [
      [
        "2023-01-08T15:20:00Z",
        2416805.75
      ],
      ...
    ]
  },
  ...
]

Alerts

List Alerts

Get all alerts.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

[
  {
  "id": 4,
  "trigger_type": "string", // "hit_rate" or "memory_usage"
  "trigger_threshold": 90,  // percentage 0-100
  "delivery_config_id": 4,
  "description": "string",
  "enabled": true
  },
  ...
]

Create Alert

Create a new alert.

HTTP Request

POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts

Request Body

{
  "trigger_type": "string", // "hit_rate" or "memory_usage"
  "trigger_threshold": 0, // percentage 0-100
  "delivery_config_id": 0,
  "description": "string",
  "enabled": boolean
}

Responses

Example

curl -X POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts \
  --user <username>:<password> \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"trigger_type":"hit_rate","trigger_threshold":50,"delivery_config_id":1,"description":"This is a description.","enabled":true}'

Returns

{
  "id": 4,
  "trigger_type": "hit_rate",
  "trigger_threshold": 50,
  "delivery_config_id": 1,
  "description": "This is a description.",
  "enabled": true
}

Get Alert

Get an alert by ID.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts/<alert_id>

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts/<alert_id> \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

{
  "id": 4,
  "trigger_type": "string", // "hit_rate" or "memory_usage"
  "trigger_threshold": 80, // percentage 0-100
  "delivery_config_id": 4,
  "description": "string",
  "enabled": true
}

Update Alert

Updates an alert.

HTTP Request

PUT https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts/<alert_id>

Request Body

{
  "id": 0,
  "trigger_type": "string", // "hit_rate" or "memory_usage"
  "trigger_threshold": 0, // percentage 0-100
  "delivery_config_id": 0,
  "description": "string",
  "enabled": boolean
}

Responses

Example

curl -X PUT https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts/<alert_id> \
  --user <username>:<password> \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"id":<alert_id>,"enabled":false}'

Returns

{
  "id": 4,
  "trigger_type": "string", // "hit_rate" or "memory_usage"
  "trigger_threshold": 50, // percentage 0-100
  "delivery_config_id": 1,
  "description": "string",
  "enabled": false,
}

Delete Alert

Deletes an alert.

HTTP Request

DELETE https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts/<alert_id>

Responses

Example

curl -X DELETE https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts/<alert_id> \
  --user <username>:<password>

List Delivery Configs

List alert delivery configs.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts/configs

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts/configs \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

[
  {
    "id": 1,
    "delivery_type": "string", // "email" or "slack"
    "email": "string",
    "slack_url": "string",
    "slack_channel": "string"
  },
  ...
]

Create Delivery Config

Create an alert delivery config.

HTTP Request

POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts/configs

Request Body

{

"delivery_type": "string", // "email" or "slack"
"email": "string",
"slack_url": "string",
"slack_channel": "string"
}

Responses

Example

curl -X POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts/configs \
  --user <username>:<password> \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"delivery_type":"slack","slack_url":"https://hooks.slack.com/services/...","slack_channel":"#alerts"}'

Returns

{
  "id": 1,
  "delivery_type": "slack",
  "email": "",
  "slack_url": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/...",
  "slack_channel": "#alerts"
}

Delete Delivery Config

Delete an alert delivery config.

HTTP Request

DELETE https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts/configs/<config_id>

Example

curl -X DELETE https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/alerts/configs/<config_id> \
  --user <username>:<password>

Introspection

Get Logs

Get the last 100 log lines for cache.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/recent_logs

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/recent_logs \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

{
  "a.b.c.example-server.com:12345": [
    {
      "timestamp": "2023-01-11T10:10:44Z",
      "key": "",
      "command": "STATS",
      "status": "OK",
      "size": 0
    },
    ...
  ]
}

Get Compound Stats

Get compound stats for cache.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/compound_stats

Query Parameters

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/compound_stats?startTime=2023-01-08T15:20:00Z&endTime=2023-01-10T15:20:00Z \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

[
  {
    "name": "compound_stats",
    "columns": [
      "time",
      "num_keys",
      "total_size",
      "total_hits_rate",
      "total_misses_rate",
      "total_mutations_rate"
    ],
    "values": [
      [
        "2023-01-10T15:20:00Z",
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0
      ],
      ...
    ]
  }
]

Get Popular Items

Get popular items for cache.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/popular_items

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/popular_items \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

{
  "time_slice": 186554450945,
  "most_hit_keys": [
    {
      "name": "string",
      "popularity": 0
    },
    ...
  ],
  "most_missed_keys": [
    {
      "name": "string",
      "popularity": 0
    },
    ...
  ],
  "most_mutated_keys": [
    {
      "name": "string",
      "popularity": 0
    },
    ...
  ],
  "popular_prefixes": [
    {
      "name": "string",
      "popularity": 0
    },
    ...
  ]
}

Get Key Stats

Get stats for a key by its name.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/key_stats

Query Parameters

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/key_stats?key=<key_name> \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

[
  {
    "timestamp": "2019-08-24T14:15:22Z",
    "name": "string",
    "size": 0,
    "hit_count": 0,
    "miss_count": 0,
    "mutation_count": 0,
    "in_cache": true
  }
]

Get Watched Prefixes

Get all watched prefixes for cache.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/prefixes

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/prefixes \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

[
  {
    "id": 1,
    "name": "string",
  },
  ...
]

Watch Prefix

Watch a prefix. Start collecting stats for a prefix.

HTTP Request

POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/prefixes

Responses

Example

curl -X POST https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/prefixes \
  --user <username>:<password> \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"name":"my_prefix"}'

Returns

{
  "id": 1,
  "name": "string",
}

Unwatch Prefix

Unwatch a prefix. Stop collecting stats for a prefix.

HTTP Request

DELETE https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/prefixes/<prefix_id>

Responses

Example

curl -X DELETE https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/prefixes/<prefix_id> \
  --user <username>:<password> \

Get Prefix Stats

Get stats for a watched prefix.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/prefixes/<prefix_id>/stats

Query Parameters

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/prefixes/<prefix_id>/stats?startTime=2023-01-08T15:20:00Z&endTime=2023-01-10T15:20:00Z \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

[
  {
    "name": "prefix_stats",
    "columns": [
      "time",
      "num_keys",
      "total_size",
      "total_hits_rate",
      "total_misses_rate",
      "total_mutations_rate"
    ],
    "values": [
      [
        "2023-01-16T10:50:00Z",
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0
      ],
      ...
    ]
  }
]

Get Prefix Popular Items

Get popular items for a watched prefix.

HTTP Request

GET https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/prefixes/<prefix_id>/popular_items

Responses

Example

curl https://analytics.memcachier.com/api/v2/caches/<cache_id>/introspection/prefixes/<prefix_id>/popular_items \
  --user <username>:<password>

Returns

{
  "time_slice": 186554450945,
  "most_hit_keys": [
    {
      "name": "string",
      "popularity": 0
    },
    ...
  ],
  "most_missed_keys": [
    {
      "name": "string",
      "popularity": 0
    },
    ...
  ],
  "most_mutated_keys": [
    {
      "name": "string",
      "popularity": 0
    },
    ...
  ],
  "popular_prefixes": [
    {
      "name": "string",
      "popularity": 0
    },
    ...
  ]
}

Credentials

In order to connect a memcache client to MemCachier, you use a username and password listed on the analytics dashboard for your cache. Each cache can have multiple sets of credentials. One of these sets of credentials is distinguished as primary, meaning that it is linked to the Heroku MemCachier addon.

From the Credentials panel on the analytics dashboard, it is possible to create new credentials, delete existing credentials and promote secondary credentials to primary credentials. This makes it possible to rotate credentials by creating a new set of secondary credentials and promoting them to primary. Promoting a set of secondary credentials to primary causes an update of the MEMCACHIER_USERNAME and MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD configuration variables on your Heroku app and a restart of your dynos to pick up the new values.

Each set of credentials for a cache can be given different capabilities, in the sense that sets of credentials can be restricted to read-only access to the cache, or prevented from flushing the cache via the memcache API. These capabilities are controlled by checkboxes on the Credentials panel of the analytics dashboard. (The exact error conditions that a client will receive if it attempts to perform an action for which it does not have the capability depends on the details of the client library used. The most common cases are likely to be for the Dalli Ruby library and the pylibmc Python library. For both of these client libraries, attempting to set a cache entry using credentials that do not have the write capability will simply result in a “value not set” response from the library.)

Disabled Caches

Development caches are disabled after 30 days of inactivity. Disabled caches can no longer be accessed (authentication will fail). To use the caches again it can be re-enabled on the analytics dashboard under the Settings panel.

Encrypted Connections (TLS)

It is possible to connect to MemCachier using TLS encrypted sockets. While no existing clients support TLS connections natively, we provide a buildpack for Heroku customers that proxies the connection to MemCachier and wraps it in a TLS connection. This can be useful for the extra paranoid among us, or to securely access your cache from outside the datacenter.

The buildpack installs and sets up stunnel on localhost listening on port 11211. It configures stunnel to connect to the MemCachier servers specified in your environment variable and to verify certificates as signed by the MemCachier Root CA.

Use the buildpack in conjunction with another buildpack that actually runs your app, using Heroku’s multiple buildpack feature:

$ heroku buildpacks:add https://github.com/memcachier/memcachier-tls-buildpack.git

Finally, configure your app to connect to localhost:11211 instead of using the MEMCACHIER_SERVERS environment variable, but, leave your MEMCACHIER_SERVERS environment variable unchanged as the TLS buildpack uses it to connect to MemCachier.

Upgrading and downgrading

Changing your plan, either by upgrading or downgrading, can be done easily at any time through Heroku.

• No code changes are required.
• Your cache won’t be lost or reset*.
• You are charged by the hour for plans, so try experimenting with different cache sizes with low cost.

Using MemCachier

Please refer to your client or framework documentation for how to use MemCachier effectively.

MemCachier Guides:

• Advanced Memcache Usage
• Building a Rails App with MemCachier
• Scale Django with MemCachier
• Scale Laravel with MemCachier
• Scale Express.js with MemCachier
• Rails + Rack::Cache + MemCachier
• Java Webapp Runner Guide
• Heroku’s Guide to Caching

Framework and Client Documentation:

• Dalli (Ruby Client) API
• Rails Caching Guide
• PHP Memcached client
• CakePHP Caching Guide
• Pylibmc (Pytnon Client) API
• Django Caching Guide
• MemJS (node.js client) API
• Spymemcached JavaDocs

Key-Value size limit (1MB)

MemCachier has a maximum size that a key-value object can be of 1MB. This applies to both key-value pairs created through a set command, or existing key-value pairs grown through the use of an append or prepend command. In the later case, the size of the key-value pair with the new data added to it, must still be less than 1MB.

The 1MB limit applies to the size of the key and the value together. A key of size 512KB with a value of 712KB would be in violation of the 1MB limit.

The reason for this has partially to do with how memory is managed in MemCachier. A limitation of the high performance design is a restriction on how large key-value pairs can become. Another reason is that storing values larger than 1MB doesn’t normally make sense in a high-performance key-value store. The network transfer time in these situations becomes the limiting factor for performance. A disk cache or even a database makes sense for this size value.

Errors about app trying to connect to localhost

By default, most memcache client look for the environment variables, MEMCACHE_SERVERS, MEMCACHE_USERNAME and MEMCACHE_PASSWORD for their configuration. These variables are used when the initialization code for the memcache client doesn’t specifically specify these values.

If these environment variables aren’t set, clients generally default to connecting to 127.0.0.1:11211 (i.e., localhost), with no username and password.

The MemCachier add-on sets the MEMCACHIER_SERVERS, MEMCACHIER_USERNAME and MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD environment variables. So you need to either set the equivalent MEMCACHE_* variables from these, or pass these values to your client when you create a new one in your code.

For example, pseudo-code for the first approach is:

env[MEMCACHE_SERVERS] = env[MEMCACHIER_SERVERS]
env[MEMCACHE_USERNAME] = env[MEMCACHIER_USERNAME]
env[MEMCACHE_PASSWORD] = env[MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD]

While pseudo-code for the second approach is:

memClient = new MemcacheClient(ENV['MEMCACHIER_SERVERS'],
                               ENV['MEMCACHIER_USERNAME'],
                               ENV['MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD'])

Please be careful that you have setup the your client in all locations. Many frameworks, such as Rails, use memcache in multiple ways and may require you to setup initialization properly in a few locations. Generally the first approach is preferred as it is global while the second approach is local to each initialization.

For example, with Ruby on Rails, you’ll need to setup cache_store, Rack::Cache and the session_store.

Support

All MemCachier support and runtime issues should be submitted via one of the Heroku Support channels. You can also reach us directly at support@memcachier.com. We encourage you to CC us on any urgent support tickets sent to Heroku.

Any non-support related issues or product feedback is welcome via email at: support@memcachier.com.

Any issues related to MemCachier service are reported at MemCachier Status.

Please also follow us on Twitter, @memcachier, for status and product announcements.