StashCache

StashCache is an in-memory caching library for your .NET application. Under the hood, it uses the MemoryCache from Microsoft.Extensions.Caching.Memory.

Why StashCache?

Developers tend to procrastinate caching because oftentimes it is divorced from retrieving of data. StashCache is designed such that retrieving and caching of data is inside the same method block.

Download

StashCache is available on nuget.

Getting Started

See example in Sample.AspNetCore project in this repo.

• Register the extension method for the service in Startup.ConfigureServices.

    public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
    {
        // Import namespace:
        // using StashCache;
        services.AddStashCache();
    }

• Choose cache key generator; or implement one as the need arises.

  TypeCacheKeyGenerator can be selected in order to generate cache key which is structured into: type/class + method + additional segments.

    // From Sample.AspNetCore WeatherForecastService class
    private static readonly ICacheKeyGenerator<TypeCacheKeyGenerator> CacheKeyGenerator = CacheKeyGeneratorFactory.GetCacheKeyGenerator<TypeCacheKeyGenerator>();

    private static readonly TimeSpan DefaultCacheExpiry = TimeSpan.FromHours(1);

• Inject ILocalCache to a class which retrieves data

    private readonly ILocalCache _localCache;
    
    public WeatherForecastService(ILocalCache localCache)
    {
        _localCache = localCache;
    }

• Lastly, implement caching in the same method block as the data retrieval.

    public async Task<IEnumerable<WeatherForecast>> GetAll(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        var cacheKey = CacheKeyGenerator.GenerateCacheKey<WeatherForecastService>();

        var result = await _localCache.GetOrAddAsync(cacheKey, async () =>
        {
            var summaries = await GetSummariesAsyc(); // This can be your database call
            return summaries;

        }, DefaultCacheExpiry, cancellationToken).ConfigureAwait(false);

        return result;
    }

Benchmark using BenchmarkDotNet

Method	# of Cached Items	Total # of retrievals	Mean (μs)	StdDev (μs)	Allocated (KB)
GetOrAddAsync	100	1	61.05	2.416	57
GetOrAddAsync	100	10	609.78	5.298	568
GetOrAddAsync	100	100	5,829.17	121.375	5,675
GetOrAddAsync	100	500	29,906.00	201.832	28,376
GetOrAddAsync	500	500	156,081.09	2,215.348	142,444
GetOrAddAsync	1000	500	306,005.04	2,911.767	285,028