Expert PHP and MySQL®

Chapter 5. memcached and MySQL

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Obtaining, installing, and configuring the Memcached Functions for MySQL

• Syntax and usage examples for various user-defined functions included with Memcached Functions for MySQL

• Constructing database statements that obtain data from both memcached and MySQL

• Using triggers to automatically cache data in memcached

In Chapter 4, the PHP client library PECL/memcached that PHP applications use to interface with memcached server pools is implemented at the application layer. What about memcached and MySQL? Is there any sort of interoperability between the two given that they are so commonly used together? It would be great if there was some sort of "glue" between the two, perhaps not even requiring you to have your interaction to each implemented in your PHP application code.

In the open-sourced world, if there is a need, then there is probably a solution to that need! This is why the Memcached Functions for MySQL — aka Memcached UDFs — were written.

This chapter shows you how to take advantage of the Memcached Functions for MySQL, a suite of user-defined functions that make it possible to cache and retrieve cached data at the database layer — from within MySQL.

THE MEMCACHED FUNCTIONS FOR MYSQL

As you will see in Chapter 7, MySQL has an API for writing user defined functions, otherwise known as UDFs. That chapter shows an example of a UDF that has a file stat on a directory containing a schema's data files to calculate how much disk space ...