Python Memcached Verbosity (Detailed Guide w/ Code Examples)

Use Case(s)

The verbosity command is typically used in debugging or monitoring scenarios, where it's necessary to understand what's going on internally with the Memcached instance. The 'verbosity' option allows you to specify the logging level of your Memcached server. Higher levels produce more detailed (verbose) outputs.

Code Examples

Python's pymemcache library provides a client for communicating with Memcached servers. However, there isn't a direct way to set the verbosity level through pymemcache. You can instead set this when starting your Memcached server from the command line using -vv or -vvv for higher verbosity levels.

Starting memcached server with verbosity:

memcached -vv

Nonetheless, you can still interact with Memcached from Python as follows:

from pymemcache.client.base import Client

# Create a client instance
client = Client(('localhost', 11211))

# Set a value
client.set('key', 'value')

# Get a value
result = client.get('key')
print(result)  # outputs: value

This code connects to a Memcached server running locally, sets a value for a specified key and retrieves it.

Best Practices

• Only use high verbosity levels during debugging or monitoring stages as it could have performance implications due to the increased I/O.
• Always make sure to close connections to the Memcached server when finished to prevent connection leakage.

Common Mistakes

• Running Memcached with high verbosity in production - This can significantly slow down responses because of the logging overhead.
• Not closing Memcached client after operations are done - It can lead to resource leakage and eventually to application failure.

FAQs

Q: How can I change the verbosity level in a running Memcached server? A: You cannot change it for a running server. The verbosity level is set when you start the Memcached server.

Q: Can I affect the verbosity from Python code? A: No, the verbosity level is configured at the server level, and not through the client API.