feathers-redis-cache: A TypeScript repository from DelfsEngineering

This repository is a fork of feathers-hooks-rediscache, with the following changes:

refactor and simplified API and source code (details bellow).
support of feathers pagination hook, when it's enabled or disabled per the same endpoint.
key always generated in before hook.
option to pass custom logger function to log errors.
option to pass custom /cache prefix for redis routs.
option to pass custom cacheKey(hook) function in before hook, to customize key generation.
implementing .purge() hook, so you can place in after create/patch/update/remove hooks to purge entire group and avoid having keys with corrupted values in the cache.
remove hookCache now to set custom expiration date you need to pass it as an option in after hook.
remove redisCache from config.
remove parseNestedRoutes, removePathFromCacheKey, defaultDuration (by default it will expire in 24hr), immediateCacheKey options.

Installation

  yarn add feathers-redis-cache

  npm install feathers-redis-cache

Purpose

The purpose of these hooks is to provide redis caching for APIs endpoints. Using redis is a very good option for clustering your API. As soon as a request is cached it is available to all the other nodes in the cluster, which is not true for usual in memory cache as each node has its own memory allocated. This means that each node has to cache all requests individually.

Each request to an endpoint can be cached. Route variables and params are cached on a per request base. If a param to call is set to true and then to false two responses will be cached.

The cache can be purged for an individual route, but also for a group of routes. This is very useful if you have an API endpoint that creates a list of articles, and an endpoint that returns an individual article. If the article is modified, the list of articles should, most likely, be purged as well. This can be done by calling one endpoint.

Routes exemples

In the same fashion if you have many variants of the same endpoint that return similar content based on parameters you can bust the whole group as well:

'/articles' // list
'/articles/article' //individual item
'/articles/article?markdown=true' // variant

Clearing cache

These are all listed in a redis list under group-articles and can be busted by calling /cache/clear/group/articles. All urls keys will be purged.

You can also purge single cached paths as by doing GET requests on

'/cache/clear/single/articles'
'/cache/clear/single/articles/article'
'/cache/clear/single/articles/article?markdown=true' // works with query strings too

purge all keys by calling /cache/clear/all
flash entire redis db /cache/flashdb

It was meant to be used over HTTP, not yet tested with sockets.

Configuration

Redis

To configure the redis connection the feathers configuration system can be used.

//config/default.json
{
  "host": "localhost",
  "port": 3030,
  "redis": {
    "host": "my-redis-service.example.com",
    "port": 1234
  }
}

if no config is provided, default config from the redis module is used

Available hooks

More details and example use bellow

hooks.before(options) - retrieves the data from redis
hooks.after(options) - cache the data to redis
hooks.purge() - purge cache from redis

options properties (all props are optional)

cacheKey(context: `feathers-context`): `string`

In case if you want to use custom function to modify key name. You need to pass the same function in before and after hooks.

cacheGroupKey(context: `feathers-context`): `string`

If you want to use custom function to modify group key name. You need to pass the same function in before and after hooks.

expiration: `number`

Time in seconds when to expire the key, this option need to be passed in after hook, if you won't pass it, default value of 1 day will be used.

env: `string`

The default environment is production, but it is annoying when running test as the hooks output information to the console. Therefore if you use this option, you can set test as an environment and the hooks will not output anything to the console. This is useful for CI or CLI.

Available routes:

'/cache/clear/all' // clears the whole cache
'/cache/clear/single/:target' // clears a single route if you want to purge a route with params just adds them target?param=1
'/cache/clear/group/:target' // clears a group

Complete Example

Here's an example of a Feathers server that uses feathers-redis-cache.

const feathers = require('feathers');
const rest = require('feathers-rest');
const hooks = require('feathers-hooks');
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');
const errorHandler = require('feathers-errors/handler');
const redisCache = require('feathers-redis-cache');

// Initialize the application
const app = feathers()
  .use(bodyParser.json())
  .use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }))
  .configure(rest())
  .configure(hooks())
  // errorLogger is function for logging errors
  // if not passed console.error will bbe used
  .configure(redisCache.client({ errorLogger: logger.error }))
  // you can change cache path prefix by passing `pathPrefix` option
  // if not passed default prefix '/cache' will be used
  .configure(redisCache.services({ pathPrefix: '/cache' }))
  .use(errorHandler());

app.listen(3030);

console.log('Feathers app started on 127.0.0.1:3030');

Add hooks on the routes that need caching

//services/<service>.hooks.js

const redisCache = require('feathers-redis-cache');


module.exports = {
  before: {
    all: [],
    find: [redisCache.hooks.before()],
    get: [redisCache.hooks.before()],
    create: [],
    update: [],
    patch: [],
    remove: []
  },

  after: {
    all: [],
    find: [redisCache.hooks.after({ expiration: 3600 * 24 * 7 })],
    get: [redisCache.hooks.after({ expiration: 3600 * 24 * 7 })],
    create: [redisCache.hooks.purge()],
    update: [redisCache.hooks.purge()],
    patch: [redisCache.hooks.purge()],
    remove: [redisCache.hooks.purge()]
  },

  error: {
    all: [],
    find: [],
    get: [],
    create: [],
    update: [],
    patch: [],
    remove: []
  }
};

You can also skip cache hook by passing hook.params.$skipCacheHook = true You can also disable redis-cache hooks and service by passing env. variable DISABLE_REDIS_CACHE=true

TODO:

TS definitions
test cases
option in after hook to set limit of keys per group

License

Licensed under the MIT license.

DelfsEngineering/feathers-redis-cache