Add support for the binary protocol

[sontek]

https://github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki/BinaryProtocolRevamped

The binary protocol is much faster than the text protocol:

http://www.erikwebb.net/blog/benchmarking-memcached-memslap/

pylibmc already supports this with binary=True

Outside of performance this also allows set_multi to be a real performant call instead of a ton of individual calls.

[edmorley]

In addition to being faster, the binary protocol is required if using SASL auth (eg with a cloud memcached offering such as Memcachier or Memcached Cloud).

Both pylibmc and python-binary-memcached support the binary protocol, and thus SASL auth.

[jparise]

I was actually looking at this just the other day. I'll need to spend some time on it, but I think this would be a nice feature to add.

[jparise]

We use mcrouter extensively at Pinterest, and it unfortunately doesn't support the binary protocol (facebook/mcrouter#6). That makes it less of a priority for us (internal-development-wise), but we'd be happy to accept a patch!

[simonzheng]

Hey there, just noting that some of your links in this thread are broken (e.g. https://code.google.com/p/memcached/wiki/MemcacheBinaryProtocol in @sontek 's post and @jparise 's mcrouter link)

[jparise]

@simonzheng: I fixed my link. Thanks!

[sontek]

I can fix mine tonight

[derekargueta]

While it's probably still worth implementing for folks who do use it, the Binary protocol is actually deprecated in favor to the new Meta protocol

https://github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki/ReleaseNotes160

[ferndot]

Will this ever be revisited? pymemcache seems like the best library by far, but we can't use it with Heroku + Memcachier without binary protocol support.

[jogo]

Hi @joshua-s, we are happy to merge in a pull request for binary protocol support. As @jparise previously mentioned we wouldn't be able to use it ourselves which is why we haven't implemented it already.

[damjankuznar]

:heavy_plus_sign: for this feature