CachedLookup: A Simple Package To Cache And Save On Expensive Lookups & Operations.

Motivation

This package aims to simplify the task of implementing a short-lived caching system for an endpoint which may be calling another third party API under the hood with a usage/rate limit. This package can also help to alleviate pressure when consuming data from databases or I/O network operations by implementing a short lived cache that does not scale relative to incoming requests.

Features

• Simple-to-use API
• TypeScript Support
• Customizable Cache Lifetime
• Parameter Based Caching
• Dynamic Cache Consumption
• Extremely Lightweight
• No Dependencies

Installation

CachedLookup can be installed using node package manager (npm)

npm i cached-lookup

How To Use?

Below is a small snippet that shows how to use a CachedLookup instance.

const CachedLookup = require('cached-lookup');

// Create a cached lookup instance which fetches music concerts from different cities on a specific date
const ConcertsLookup = new CachedLookup(async (city) => {
    // Assume that the function get_city_concerts() is calling a Third-Party API which has a rate limit
    const concerts = await get_city_concerts(city);
    
    // Simply return the data and CachedLookup will handle the rest
    return concerts;
});

// Create some route which serves this data with a 10 second intermittent cache
webserver.get('/api/concerts/:city', async (request, response) => {
    // Retrieve the city value from the request - assume there is user validation done on this here
    const city = request.path_parameters.city;

    // Retrieve data from the CachedLookup with the cached() and pass the city in the call to the lookup handler
    // Be sure to specify the first parameter as the max_age of the cached value in milliseconds
    // In our case, 10 seconds would be 10,000 milliseconds
    const concerts = await ConcertsLookup.cached(1000 * 10, city);
    
    // Simply return the data to the user
    // Because we retrieved this data from the ConcertsLookup with the cached() method
    // We can safely assume that we will only perform up to 1 Third-Party API request per city every 10 seconds
    return response.json({
        concerts
    });
});

CachedLookup

Below is a breakdown of the CachedLookup class.

Constructor Parameters

• new CachedLookup(Function: lookup): Creates a new CachedLookup instance.
  • lookup [Function]: Lookup handler which is called to get fresh values.
    • Note! this callback can be either synchronous or asynchronous.
    • Note! you must return/resolve a value through this callback for the caching to work properly.
    • Note! arguments passed to the methods below will be available in each call to this handler.

CachedLookup Properties

CachedLookup Methods

• cached(Number: max_age, ...arguments): Returns the cached value for the provided set of arguments from the lookup handler.
  • Returns a Promise which is then resolved to the lookup resolved value.
  • Note parameter max_age should be a Number in milliseconds to specify the maximum acceptable cache age.
  • Note this method will automatically fall back to a fresh() call if no viable cache value is available.
  • Note the returned Promise will reject when the lookup handler also rejects.
  • Note the provided arguments in after the max_age will be available inside of the lookup handler function.
• fresh(...arguments): Retrieves the fresh value for the provided set of arguments from the lookup handler.
  • Returns a Promise which is then resolved to the lookup resolved value.
• expire(...arguments): Expires the cached value (If one exists) for the provided set of arguments.
  • Returns a Boolean which specifies whether a cache value was expired or not.
• in_flight(...arguments): Checks whether a fresh value is currently being resolved for the provided set of arguments.
  • Returns a Boolean to specify the result.
• updated_at(...arguments): Returns the last value update timestamp in milliseconds for the provided set of arguments.
  • Returns a Number or undefined if no cache value exists.
• Note the ...arguments are optional but must be of the following types: Boolean, Number, String or an Array of these types.

License

MIT