Validate if an IP is banned using memcached

* Requirement: how to install memcached in Ubuntu

The most common way to validate if an IP is banned from a website will be to execute a query in the database and look if that IP is banned or not. Although this is a good implementation, you might experience a decrease of performance on your site. The solution: "memcached" the result.

By using memcached, these records will be retrieved very fast and therefore increase the performance of your site.

First, let's create a simple singleton class that extends the Memcache object.

// file: IpCache.class.php

class IpCache extends Memcache {
    const IP_GOOD = 0;
    const IP_BANNED = 1;

    private static $instance = NULL;

    private function __construct() {
    }

    public function __destruct() {
        $this->close();
    }

    public static function getInstance() {
        if(!is_object(self::$instance)) {
            self::$instance = new IpCache;
            self::$instance->addServer('127.0.0.1', 11211) or throw new Exception('Cannot connect to memcached');
        }
        return self::$instance;
    }

    public function check($ip) {
        return $this->get(ip2long($ip));
    }

    public function save($ip, $banned) {
        $this->set(ip2long($ip), $banned);
    }
}

Now let's create the script to verify if the IP is banned

// file: index.php

require('IpCache.class.php');

$ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

$MemCache = IpCache::getInstance();
$result = $MemCache->check($ip);

// if the record does not exists in memcache, add it
if($result === FALSE) {
    /* Do some sql query to check if the IP is banned and use IpCache::IP_BANNED OR IpCache::IP_GOOD */
    $t = $MemCache->save($ip, IpCache::IP_BANNED);
    // or
    $t = $MemCache->save($ip, IpCache::IP_GOOD);
}

if($result === IpCache::IP_BANNED) {
    header('location: http://www.bookofzeus.com');
    die();
}

/* Load the rest of the page */

Once an Ip is added to memcached, it will stay (unless there's an expiration time or the server reboot) in the system. So if you added a good Ip to a blacklist of Ips and you need to move it to a white list, you will need to use the following code:

// file: admin/memcache-delete.php

require('IpCache.class.php');

$ip = '1.1.1.1'; // or can get it from the _GET or _POST
$value = 0; // Not Banned

$MemCache = IpCache::getInstance();
$MemCache->delete(ip2long($ip));
$MemCache->set(ip2long($ip), $value);

Done!