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memcached PHP semaphore & cache expiration handling

There are a lot of different ways that people use memcached and PHP. The most common of which is probably your basic set and get to cache data from your database.

  1. function get_my_data1() {
  2.     $cache_id = "mykey";
  3.     $data = $memcache_obj->get($cache_id);
  4.     if ( !$data ) {
  5.         $data = get_data_from_db_function();
  6.         $memcache_obj->set($cache_id, $data, $sec_to_cache_for);
  7.     }
  8.     return $data;
  9. }

But what if the query that’s going to hit the database is pretty intensive and you don’t want more than one user to hit the db at a time? That’s easily handling via a semaphore lock.

  1. function get_my_data2() {
  2.     $cache_id = "mykey";
  3.     $data = $memcache_obj->get($cache_id);
  4.     if ( !$data ) {
  5.         // check to see if someone has already set the lock
  6.         $data_lock = $memcache_obj->get($cache_id . ‘_qry_lock’);
  7.         if ( $data_lock ) {
  8.             $lock_counter = 0;
  9.             // loop until you find that the lock has been released.  that implies that the query has finished
  10.             do while ( $data_lock ) {
  11.                 // you may only want to wait for a specified period of time.
  12.                 // one second is usually sufficient since your goal is to always have sub-second response time
  13.                 // if you query takes more than 1 second, you should consider "warming" your cached data via a cron job
  14.                 if ( $lock_counter > $max_time_to_wait ) {
  15.                     $lock_failed = true;
  16.                     break;
  17.                 }
  18.                 // you really want this to be a fraction of a second so the user waits as little as possible
  19.                 // for the simplicity of example, I’m using the sleep function.
  20.                 sleep(1);
  21.                 $data_lock = $memcache_obj->get($cache_id . ‘_qry_lock’);
  22.             }
  23.             // if the loop is completed, that either means the user waited for too long
  24.             // or that the lock has been removed.  try to get the cached data again; it should exist now
  25.             $data = $memcache_obj->get($cache_id);
  26.             if ( $data ) {
  27.                 return $data;
  28.             }
  29.         }
  30.         // set a lock for 2 seconds
  31.         $memcache_obj->set($cache_id . ‘_qry_lock’, true, 2);
  32.         $data = get_data_from_db_function();
  33.         $memcache_obj->set($cache_id, $data, $sec_to_cache_for);
  34.         // don’t forget to remove the lock
  35.         $memcache_obj->delete($cache_id . ‘_qry_lock’);
  36.     }
  37.     return $data;
  38. }

More below the break –> Read More…

Posted under PHP, Tips & Tricks, Web Development, mysql

This post was written by Michael Tougeron on January 11, 2008

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