kakku

A backend-agnostic cache layer designed with high performance and hit ratios in mind.

Features

• Promise-based interface.
• Optional collapsing for concurrent gets of the same item to avoid excessive reads / recalculations.
• Optional usage of stale caches with refreshing on the background.

Immutability / Caveats

It's worth noting that for performance reasons, Kakku assumes you don't mutate the data coming from the cache. In many cases multiple gets can return the same object, and thus modifying it will modify it for all the recipients. In development, it may be worth freezing the results you get from your caches just to be sure you don't touch them.

API

Kakku

A class for managing caches.

Options

• hashAlgorithm An function to use for creating hashes / cache keys out of the parameter objects. Required. The function is provided with the object to hash and should return the hash.
• store The storing backend to use. See the Stores section for a list of supported stores.
• prefix The prefix to use for the cache keys. Defaults to kakku.
• collapseGets If true, all get operations with the same parameters to the same cache are collapsed to one active operation. This helps reduce the number of reads and recalculations. Defaults to false.
• collapseFetches If true, all refreshes with the same parameters to the same cache are collapsed to one active operation. This helps reduce the number of writes and recalculations. Defaults to false.
• useAfterStale If true, results from the cache will be used after stale and the caches will be refreshed in the background. This helps provide more stable response times. Defaults to false.

Methods

register(options)

Registers a new cache by name.

Options

• name The name of the cache.
• store Allows overwriting the default store of the Kakku instance on a per-cache basis.
• collapseGets Allows overwriting the default get mode of the Kakku instance on a per-cache basis.
• collapseFetches Allows overwriting the default fetch mode of the Kakku instance on a per-cache basis.
• useAfterStale Allows overwriting the default stale cache behavior of the Kakku instance on a per-cache basis.
• implementation The method to call to calculate the value of the cache. Is given the cache parameters and should return a promise of an object with the following keys:
  • data The result of the calculation.
  • ttl The TTL of the result, in milliseconds.

get(key, parameters)

Gets an item from the cache.

Arguments

• name The name of the cache to get the item from.
• parameters The parameters to get with. Used for the cache key and fed to the implementation.

Returns

A promise of an object with the following keys:

• data The result of the calculation.
• ttl The TTL of the result, in milliseconds.

Events

All events have the following properties:

• cacheName The name of the cache.
• cacheKey The key used for the operation.
• cacheParameters The parameters used for the operation.

error

Fired when the Store implementation returns an error (this should never happen unless your Store is broken).

Properties

• originalError The original error given by the Store implementation.
• time The time the failed operation took. In high-resolution time.

hit

Fired when there is a cache hit.

Properties

• ttl The remainining TTL of the result, in milliseconds.
• stale A boolean indicating whether the result was stale.
• time The time getting the item from cache took. In high-resolution time.
• source The name of the Store that provided the result.

miss

Fired when there is a cache miss.

Properties

• time The time getting a miss from cache took. In high-resolution time.

Operations

All of the following operations are monitored:

• get When a new get is issued and not collapsed into an existing one.
• collapsed_get When a new get is issued and collapsed into an existing one.
• fetch When a new calculation is needed and not collapsed into an existing one.
• collapsed_fetch When a new calculation is needed and collapsed into an existing one.
• write When writing to the store.
• read When reading from the store.

Emitting the following events:

{{operation name}}_started

Emitted when the operation has started.

{{operation name}}_finished

Emitted when the operation has finished, regardless of success.

{{operation name}}_success

Emitted when the operation has finished successfully.

{{operation name}}_error

Emitted when the operation has finished with an error.

Properties

The events have the following properties:

• cacheName The name of the cache.
• cacheKey The key used for the operation.
• cacheParameters The parameters used for the operation.
• time The time the operation took. In high-resolution time. Not availabled on the {{operation name}}_started

Stores

There are currently three officially supported store implementations for Kakku:

• kakku-lru-cache-store is a lru-cache-backed in-memory Store for Kakku.
• kakku-redis-store is a redis-backed Store for Kakku.
• kakku-multi-store is a Store that allows you to use multiple Stores for fallbacks and performance.

Other recommended modules

• object-hash is the recommended hashAlgorithm.
• es6-promise if you're on node.js <0.12.x you'll need a polyfill for ES6 Promises. On iojs and node.js 0.12.x and later these are supported natively.
• es6-collections if you're on node.js <0.12.x you'll need a polyfill for ES6 Maps. On iojs and node.js 0.12.x and later these are supported natively.

Examples / Patterns

Basic usage with Redis and object-hash

var hash = require("object-hash");
var Redis = require("redis");
var Kakku = require("kakku").Kakku;
var RedisStore = require("kakku-redis-store").RedisStore;
 
var redisClient = redis.createClient();
 
var kakku = new Kakku({
    prefix: "cache",
    hashAlgorithm: hash,
    store: new RedisStore({ client: redisClient }),
});
 
kakku.register({
    name: "foo",
    implementation: function (parameters) {
        return Promise.resolve({
            data: {
                x: parameters.y + 1,
            },
            ttl: 1000 * 60 * 30, // half an hour
        });
    },
});
 
kakku.get("foo", { y: 1000 }).then(function (result) {
    console.log(result.data.x) // 1001
}).then(function (error) {
    // whoops something bad happened
});

Passing in parameters that aren't cacheable

Sometimes you need to pass in values that should be ignored by the caching, but are required to get the data, for example a user-specific access token. For this you can easily create a custom hashing algorithm, for example using lodash and object-hash.

var hash = require("object-hash");
var _ = require("lodash");
 
function hashAlgorithm (object) {
    return hash(_.omit(object, [
        "accessToken",
        "foo",
        // etc.
    ]));
}
 
var kakku = new Kakku({
    hashAlgorithm: hashAlgorithm,
    ...
});

Using multiple Stores

With kakku-multi-store you can use multiple backing Stores, for example if you want to use an in-memory LRU Store for fast access and Redis for shared, bigger working set. The MultiStore returns the result of the first underlying store not to return an error or empty.

...
 
var kakku = new Kakku({
    ...
    store: new MultiStore({ stores: [
        LruCacheStore({ client: LRU({ max: 500 }) }),
        RedisStore({ client: redisClient }),
    ] }),
});

Development

Development is pretty straightforward, it's all JS and the standard node stuff works:

To install dependencies:

$ npm install

To run the tests:

$ npm test

Then just make your awesome feature and a PR for it. Don't forget to file an issue first, or start with an empty PR so others can see what you're doing and discuss it so there's a a minimal amount of wasted effort.