Action caching for Action Pack (removed from core in Rails 4.0).
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem "actionpack-action_caching"
And then execute:
$ bundle
Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install actionpack-action_caching
Action caching is similar to page caching by the fact that the entire output of the response is cached, but unlike page caching, every request still goes through Action Pack. The key benefit of this is that filters run before the cache is served, which allows for authentication and other restrictions on whether someone is allowed to execute such action.
class ListsController < ApplicationController
before_action :authenticate, except: :public
caches_page :public
caches_action :index, :show
end
In this example, the public
action doesn't require authentication
so it's possible to use the faster page caching. On the other hand
index
and show
require authentication. They can still be cached,
but we need action caching for them.
Action caching uses fragment caching internally and an around
filter to do the job. The fragment cache is named according to
the host and path of the request. A page that is accessed at
http://david.example.com/lists/show/1
will result in a fragment named
david.example.com/lists/show/1
. This allows the cacher to
differentiate between david.example.com/lists/
and
jamis.example.com/lists/
-- which is a helpful way of assisting
the subdomain-as-account-key pattern.
Different representations of the same resource, e.g.
http://david.example.com/lists
and
http://david.example.com/lists.xml
are treated like separate requests and so are cached separately.
Keep in mind when expiring an action cache that
action: "lists"
is not the same as
action: "list", format: :xml
.
You can modify the default action cache path by passing a
:cache_path
option. This will be passed directly to
ActionCachePath.new
. This is handy for actions with
multiple possible routes that should be cached differently. If a
proc (or an object that responds to to_proc
) is given, it is
called with the current controller instance.
And you can also use :if
(or :unless
) to control when the action
should be cached, similar to how you use them with before_action
.
As of Rails 3.0, you can also pass :expires_in
with a time
interval (in seconds) to schedule expiration of the cached item.
The following example depicts some of the points made above:
class ListsController < ApplicationController
before_action :authenticate, except: :public
# simple fragment cache
caches_action :current
# expire cache after an hour
caches_action :archived, expires_in: 1.hour
# cache unless it's a JSON request
caches_action :index, unless: -> { request.format.json? }
# custom cache path
caches_action :show, cache_path: { project: 1 }
# custom cache path with a proc
caches_action :history, cache_path: -> { request.domain }
# custom cache path with a symbol
caches_action :feed, cache_path: :user_cache_path
protected
def user_cache_path
if params[:user_id]
user_list_url(params[:user_id], params[:id])
else
list_url(params[:id])
end
end
end
If you pass layout: false
, it will only cache your action
content. That's useful when your layout has dynamic information.
Note: Both the :format
param and the Accept
header are taken
into account when caching the fragment with the :format
having
precedence. For backwards compatibility when the Accept
header
indicates a HTML request the fragment is stored without the
extension but if an explicit "html"
is passed in :format
then
that is used for storing the fragment.
- Fork it.
- Create your feature branch (
git checkout -b my-new-feature
). - Commit your changes (
git commit -am 'Add some feature'
). - Push to the branch (
git push origin my-new-feature
). - Create a new Pull Request.