CachedResource

CachedResource is a Ruby gem designed to enhance the performance of web service interactions through ActiveResource by caching responses based on request parameters. By reducing the need for repeated network requests, it minimizes latency and optimizes the efficiency of your application's data retrieval processes.

Installation

gem install cached_resource

Compatibility

CachedResource is designed to be framework agnostic, but will hook into Rails for caching and logging if available. CachedResource supports the following ActiveSupport/Rails (right) and Ruby (down) version combinations:

	🛤️ 6.1	🛤️ 7.0	🛤️ 7.1
💎 3.0	✅	✅	✅
💎 3.1	✅	✅	✅
💎 3.2	✅	✅	✅

Configuration

Set up CachedResource across all ActiveResources:

class ActiveResource::Base
  cached_resource(options)
end

Or set up CachedResource for a single class:

class MyActiveResource < ActiveResource::Base
  cached_resource(options)
end

Options

CachedResource accepts the following options as a hash:

Option	Description	Default
:enabled	Enables or disables caching.	true
:cache_collections	Set to false to always remake a request for collections.	true
:cache	The cache store that CacheResource should use.	The Rails.cache if available, or an ActiveSupport::Cache::MemoryStore
:cache_key_prefix	A prefix to be added to the cache keys.	nil
:collection_arguments	The arguments that identify the principal collection request.	[:all]
:collection_synchronize	Use collections to generate cache entries for individuals. Update the existing cached principal collection when retrieving subsets of the principal collection or individuals.	false
:logger	The logger to which CachedResource messages should be written.	The Rails.logger if available, or an ActiveSupport::Logger
:race_condition_ttl	The race condition ttl, to prevent dog pile effect or cache stampede.	86400
:ttl_randomization_scale	A Range from which a random value will be selected to scale the ttl.	1..2
:ttl_randomization	Enable ttl randomization.	false
:ttl	The time in seconds until the cache should expire.	604800

For example:

cached_resource :cache => MyCacheStore.new, :ttl => 60, :collection_synchronize => true, :logger => MyLogger.new

You can also change them dynamically. Simply:

  MyActiveResource.cached_resource.option = option_value

Additionally a couple of helper methods are available:

  # Turn caching off
  MyActiveResource.cached_resource.off!
  # Turn caching on
  MyActiveResource.cached_resource.on!

Caveats

If you set up CachedResource across all ActiveResources or any subclass of ActiveResource that will be inherited by other classes and you want some of those others to have independent CachedResource configurations, then check out the example below:

class ActiveResource::Base
  cached_resource
end

class MyActiveResource < ActiveResource::Base
  self.cached_resource = CachedResource::Configuration.new(:collection_synchronize: true)
end

Usage

Sit back and relax! If you need to reload a particular request you can pass :reload => true into the options hash like this:

MyActiveResource.find(:all, :reload => true)

If you need to clear the entire cache just do the following:

MyActiveResource.clear_cache

---

Sometimes you might have a case the resource pathing is non-unique per call. This can create a situation where your caching the same result for multiple calls:

MyActiveResource.find(:one, from: "/admin/shop.json")

Since resources are cached with an argument based key, you may pass in extra data to be appended to the cache key:

MyActiveResource.find(:one, from: "/admin/shop.json", uid: "unique value")

Contribution

Testing

Locally

You can set TEST_RAILS_VERSION to a value of the supported Rails versions in the Compatability Matrix, or bundler will automatically select a version.

Examples:

TEST_RAILS_VERSION=7.1 bundle exec rspec # runs test suite + linter
bundle exec rspec                        # Runs test suite

With Docker

docker build -t cached_resource_test -f Dockerfile.test .
docker run --rm -v  ${PWD}/coverage:/app/coverage cached_resource_test

# Coverage report can be found in coverage/index.html
# RSpec reports can be found in coverage/spec_results/${ruby-version}-${rails-version}.index.html
# Linter reports can be found in coverage/linter-results.index.html

Code Coverage

Coverage can be found found within coverage/index.html after every test run.

Linter

We use unconfigurable linting rules from Standard

To lint run: bundle exec rake standard To automatically apply linter fixes: bundle exec rake standard:fix

Credit/Inspiration

• quamen and this gist
• latimes and this plugin

Feedback/Problems

Feedback is greatly appreciated! Check out this project's issue tracker if you've got anything to say.