Meerkat protocol is very simular with Redis protocol to focus same goal as below.

• Simple to implement
• Fast to parse by a computer
• Easy enough to parse by a human

A client connects to Meerkat server via TCP connection and PORT 7758 basically. And every commands and pareters are seperated by (\r\n).

All most of messages send from client side to Meerkat server (Request), and then server returns to each clients (Response). When client establishs connection with server, client receives a response message from server without request message once.

+WELCOME<CR><LF>

Most of the time, a client receives WELCOME response. Only when server reaches number of connections to MAX_CONNECTIONS, then client will be received as below ERROR message as

+ERROR
989
Server's having too many connections. (MAX_CONNECTIONS:XXXXX)

Please see Error Messsages

Meerkat protocol dosen't have any binary data, ascii data only. A message has a command and parameter(s).

Mentioned in above, a request message come from a client base on below request message format,

*COMMAND<CR><LF>
PARAMETER1<CR><LF>
PARAMETER2<CR><LF>
PARAMETER3<CR><LF>

First of all, every request commands have to start Request Command Prefix, "*". If not, will be ignored.

A response message also has that kind of prefix "+", so response message format as below,

+COMMAND<CR><LF>
PARAMETER1<CR><LF>
PARAMETER2<CR><LF>

Some meesages require to contain array type data, that will be included a number what number of array data. See below example

+NODES<CR><LF>
3<CR><LF>                   # <---  
192.168.0.1:1234<CR><LF>
192.168.0.1:1234<CR><LF>
192.168.0.1:1234<CR><LF>

It is a response message, but when request message need to have array data, then will be also same format.

You can see detail format for each commands