Question: Is Memcached still used?

Answer

Yes, Memcached is still widely used as a caching solution for web applications. It has been around since 2003 and remains one of the most popular caching solutions available.

Memcached helps to improve performance by caching frequently accessed data in memory, reducing the number of trips to the database required to fetch data. This can be particularly beneficial for applications that need to handle a large number of requests, such as those with high traffic websites or APIs.

Memcached is also easy to use and integrate into existing systems. Many popular programming languages have libraries and extensions to interact with Memcached, including PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, and even Node.js.

Here's an example of how to use Memcached in PHP:

// Connect to Memcached
$memcached = new Memcached();
$memcached->addServer('localhost', 11211);

// Get value from cache
$value = $memcached->get('key');

if (!$value) {
    // Value not found in cache, fetch from database
    $value = fetchValueFromDatabase();

    // Store value in cache
    $memcached->set('key', $value, 3600); // Cache for 1 hour
}

// Use value
echo $value;

In this example, we first connect to Memcached and specify the server and port to use. We then attempt to retrieve a value from the cache using the get method. If the value is not found in the cache, we fetch it from the database and store it in the cache using the set method, along with an expiration time of 1 hour. Finally, we use the retrieved value.

Overall, Memcached is still a powerful and useful tool for improving application performance through caching. It is actively maintained and continues to be a popular choice for developers.