Memcache key double escaped

Hello all,

I have trouble with nginx memcached module with urls containing
special char, for instance :

GET /list.xml?fulltext=testé&sort=rating&dir=DESC

will store the following key in memcache :

<25 set brh:262:68:/list.xml?fulltext=test%C3%A9&sort=rating&dir=DESC
0 21600 7006

25 STORED

If I query back the same URL I have the following message in nginx
debug log :

2009/02/26 07:16:38 [info] 14614#0: *4684 key: “brh:262:68:/list.xml?
fulltext=test%25C3%25A9&sort=rating&dir=DESC” was not found by
memcached while reading response header from upstream, client:
10.0.0.177, server: devel.internal.net, request: “GET /list.xml?
fulltext=test%C3%A9&sort=rating&dir=DESC HTTP/1.0”, upstream:
“memcached://10.0.0.177:11211”, host: “devel.internal.net

The request matches the key, eq : fulltext=test%C3%A9
But the memcache module is double escaping will trying to get the
query : fulltext=test%25C3%25A9

I don’t know if this is the correct behaviour, of course this can be
bypasse using the following code in python for exemple :

urllib.quote(“/list.xml?fulltext=test
%C3%A9&sort=rating&dir=DESC”,safe=“&/?=”)

$memcached_key is set like this in nginx.conf :

set $memcached_key brh:$prefix:$request_uri;

Regards,

xav

Hello!

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 07:33:41AM +0100, Xavier G. wrote:

21600 7006
“memcached://10.0.0.177:11211”, host: “devel.internal.net

$memcached_key is set like this in nginx.conf :

set $memcached_key brh:$prefix:$request_uri;

It’s expected as nginx escapes $memcached_key before passing it to
memcached. It escapes " ", “%”, %00-%1F.

Maxim D.

Hello,

It’s expected as nginx escapes $memcached_key before passing it to
memcached. It escapes " ", “%”, %00-%1F.

Thanks for your reply. Yes I could see from source that memcache
module escape the key.

But seems to me weird behaviour to escape values that are already
escaped. It’s not a problem if memcache user notice this. I’m pretty
sure this leads to lots of cache miss.

xav

Hello!

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 01:40:58PM +0100, Xavier G. wrote:

But seems to me weird behaviour to escape values that are already
escaped.

The memcached module have to be able to deal with mostly arbitrary
$memcached_key, and therefore it has to escape space and control
characters to avoid violation of memcached protocol. To make this
escaping one-to-one it’s also required to escape ‘%’.

It’s not a problem if memcache user notice this. I’m pretty
sure this leads to lots of cache miss.

I agree that this deserves a bit more documentation.

Maxim D.