Amazon ElastiCache Cluster Client is an enhanced Java library to connect to ElastiCache clusters. This client library has been built upon Spymemcached and is released under the Apache 2.0 License.

Amazon ElastiCache Cluster Client can be compiled using Apache Ant by running the following command:

ant

This will generate binary, source, and javadoc jars in the build directory of the project.

As memcached supports TLS since version 1.5.13, Amazon ElastiCache Cluster Client added TLS support for better security.

In order to create a client in TLS mode, do the following to initialize the client with the appropriate SSLContext:

import java.security.cert.CertificateFactory;
import java.security.KeyStore;
import javax.net.ssl.SSLContext;
import javax.net.ssl.TrustManagerFactory;
import net.spy.memcached.AddrUtil;
import net.spy.memcached.ConnectionFactoryBuilder;
import net.spy.memcached.MemcachedClient;
public class TLSDemo {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        ConnectionFactoryBuilder connectionFactoryBuilder = new ConnectionFactoryBuilder();
        // Build SSLContext
        TrustManagerFactory tmf = TrustManagerFactory.getInstance(TrustManagerFactory.getDefaultAlgorithm());
        tmf.init((KeyStore) null);
        SSLContext sslContext = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS");
        sslContext.init(null, tmf.getTrustManagers(), null);
        // Create the client in TLS mode
        connectionFactoryBuilder.setSSLContext(sslContext);
        // TLS mode enables hostname verification by default. It is always recommended to do that.
        connectionFactoryBuilder.setHostnameForTlsVerification("my_website.com");
        // To disable hostname verification, do the following:
        // connectionFactoryBuilder.setSkipTlsHostnameVerification(true);
        MemcachedClient client = new MemcachedClient(connectionFactoryBuilder.build(), AddrUtil.getAddresses("my_website.com:11211"));
        // Store a data item
        client.set("theKey", 3600, "This is the data value");
    }
}

To create the TLS mode client with customized TLS certificate, initialize the SSLContext as follows:

InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream("/tmp/my_certificate");
KeyStore ks = KeyStore.getInstance(KeyStore.getDefaultType());
ks.load(null);
ks.setCertificateEntry("cert", CertificateFactory.getInstance("X.509").generateCertificate(inputStream));
TrustManagerFactory tmf = TrustManagerFactory.getInstance(TrustManagerFactory.getDefaultAlgorithm());
tmf.init(ks);
SSLContext sslContext = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS");
sslContext.init(null, tmf.getTrustManagers(), null);

The rest of the logic to create the client follows.

The latest version of Amazon ElastiCache Cluster Client supports unit tests and integration tests.

Unit tests do not require any running memcached servers, and can be run using Apache Ant by the following command:

ant test

Integration tests are always run against local memcached servers. Start integration tests by the following command:

ant it

NOTE: Integration tests will start servers with ports: 11200, 11201, 11211, 11212, 22211, 22212. The integration tests can not run if one or more of those ports are using.

It has a set of command line arguments that can be used to configure your client mode, your local testing server, your type of testing server, and your certificates directory (needed for TLS mode). The arguments are listed below.

-Dclient.mode=memcached_client_mode

This argument is used to specify the mode of the client that you want to run. Supported options are Static and Dynamic. Dynamic mode enables Auto Discovery feature. Static mode runs without Auto Discovery and has the same functionality as a classic spymemcached client. By default it is set to Static.

-Dserver.bin=local_binary_of_testing_server

This argument is used to specify the location of your testing server binary. By default it is set to /usr/bin/memcached.

-Dserver.type=type_of_testing_server

This argument is used to specify the type of your testing server. Supported options are oss and elasticache. By default it is set to oss.

-Dcert.folder=certificates_folder_of_testing_server

This argument is used to specify the folder of the 2 certificates for starting memcached server with TLS enabled. Named those 2 certificates as private.cert and public.cert. This is mandatory if you want to run integration tests with TLS mode. Besides, your testing server should be built with TLS capability. See instruction: https://github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki/TLS

Github link: https://github.com/amazonwebservices/aws-elasticache-cluster-client-memcached-for-java. This repository is a fork of the spymemcached Java client for connecting to memcached (specifically the https://github.com/dustin/java-memcached-client repo).

Additional changes have been made to support Amazon ElastiCache Auto Discovery. To read more about Auto Discovery, please go here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonElastiCache/latest/mem-ug/AutoDiscovery.html.

For more information about Spymemcached see the link below:

Spymemcached Project Home contains a wiki, issue tracker, and downloads section.