The libmemcached functions provide both direct access to a single item, and a multiple-key request mechanism that provides much faster responses when fetching a large number of keys simultaneously.

The main get-style function, which is equivalent to the generic get() is memcached_get(). The functions a string pointer to the returned value for a corresponding key.

char *memcached_get (memcached_st *ptr,
                     const char *key, size_t key_length,
                     size_t *value_length,
                     uint32_t *flags,
                     memcached_return *error);

A multi-key get, memcached_mget(), is also available. Using a multiple key get operation is much quicker to do in one block than retrieving the key values with individual calls to memcached_get(). To start the multi-key get, you need to call memcached_mget():

memcached_return
         memcached_mget (memcached_st *ptr,
                         char **keys, size_t *key_length,
                         unsigned int number_of_keys);

The return value is the success of the operation. The keys parameter should be an array of strings containing the keys, and key_length an array containing the length of each corresponding key. number_of_keys is the number of keys supplied in the array.

To fetch the individual values, you need to use memcached_fetch() to get each corresponding value.

char *memcached_fetch (memcached_st *ptr,
                         const char *key, size_t *key_length,
                         size_t *value_length,
                         uint32_t *flags,
                         memcached_return *error);

The function returns the key value, with the key, key_length and value_length parameters being populated with the corresponding key and length information. The function returns NULL when there are no more values to be returned. A full example, including the populating of the key data and the return of the information is provided here.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <sstring.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <libmemcached/memcached.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  memcached_server_st *servers = NULL;
  memcached_st *memc;
  memcached_return rc;
  char *keys[]= {"huey", "dewey", "louie"};
  size_t key_length[3];
  char *values[]= {"red", "blue", "green"};
  size_t value_length[3];
  unsigned int x;
  uint32_t flags;
  char return_key[MEMCACHED_MAX_KEY];
  size_t return_key_length;
  char *return_value;
  size_t return_value_length;
  memc= memcached_create(NULL);
  servers= memcached_server_list_append(servers, "localhost", 11211, &rc);
  rc= memcached_server_push(memc, servers);
  if (rc == MEMCACHED_SUCCESS)
    fprintf(stderr,"Added server successfully\n");
  else
    fprintf(stderr,"Couldn't add server: %s\n",memcached_strerror(memc, rc));
  for(x= 0; x < 3; x++)
    {
      key_length[x] = strlen(keys[x]);
      value_length[x] = strlen(values[x]);
      rc= memcached_set(memc, keys[x], key_length[x], values[x],
                        value_length[x], (time_t)0, (uint32_t)0);
      if (rc == MEMCACHED_SUCCESS)
        fprintf(stderr,"Key %s stored successfully\n",keys[x]);
      else
        fprintf(stderr,"Couldn't store key: %s\n",memcached_strerror(memc, rc));
    }
  rc= memcached_mget(memc, keys, key_length, 3);
  if (rc == MEMCACHED_SUCCESS)
    {
      while ((return_value= memcached_fetch(memc, return_key, &return_key_length,
                                            &return_value_length, &flags, &rc)) != NULL)
        {
          if (rc == MEMCACHED_SUCCESS)
            {
              fprintf(stderr,"Key %s returned %s\n",return_key, return_value);
            }
        }
    }
  return 0;
}

Running the above application:

shell> memc_multi_fetch
Added server successfully
Key huey stored successfully
Key dewey stored successfully
Key louie stored successfully
Key huey returned red
Key dewey returned blue
Key louie returned green