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Node-cache is an easy to use module that provides an in-memory caching system for Node.js applications. It helps speed up query operations by caching the results of often used queries, making it faster for subsequent queries.

Using node-cache is easy. To get started, install it with npm.

npm install node-cache

Database access is usually expensive so you should optimize roundtrips as much as possible.

You can avoid queries by caching at multiple levels:

• Using a CDN
• Caching at browser level

Another option it to cache right before running queries. It can be easy as “ok, I’m about to run this query for these parameters, did I execute it recently?”

How to use node-cache module to cache queries

We are going to build a small piece of code to show how to use node-cache module.
It will be used to cache a SQL query result but it can be used to cache any other result.

      
const { Pool } = require('pg');
const NodeCache = require('node-cache');
const crypto = require('crypto');

const log4js = require('log4js');

const queryCache = new NodeCache();
const logger = log4js.getLogger('db_helper');
logger.level = 'info';

let rejectUnauthorized = false;
if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development') {
  rejectUnauthorized = false;
}

// more options: https://node-postgres.com/api/client
const timeout = process.env.DB_TIMEOUT || 1000 * 10;
const pool = new Pool({
  connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL,
  statement_timeout: timeout,
  query_timeout: timeout,
  connectionTimeoutMillis: timeout,
  ssl: {
    rejectUnauthorized,
  },
});

/**
 *
 * @param {stirng} theQuery
 * @param {[]]} bindings
 * @param {boolean} withCache true to cache the result
 * @return {Promise<*>}
 */
module.exports.query = async function (theQuery, bindings = [], withCache = false) {
  if (withCache) {
    logger.info(`executing query with cache ${theQuery}`);
    const stringToHash = `${theQuery}${JSON.stringify(bindings)}`;
    logger.info(`string to hash: ${stringToHash}`);
    const hash = crypto.createHash('sha256').update(stringToHash).digest('hex');
    logger.info(`hash: ${hash}`);
    const value = queryCache.get(hash);
    if (value === undefined) {
      try {
        logger.info('no cache for this query, let go to the DB');
        const queryResult = await pool.query(theQuery, bindings);
        queryCache.set(hash, queryResult);
        logger.info(`cache set for ${hash}`);
        return queryResult;
      } catch (error) {
        throw new Error(`Error executing query with cache ${theQuery} error: ${error}`);
      }
    } else {
      logger.info(`returning query result from cache ${theQuery}`);
      log.info(queryCache.getStats());
      return value;
    }
  } else {
    try {
      logger.info(`executing query without cache ${theQuery}`);
      const result = await pool.query(theQuery, bindings);

      // delete all the cache content if we are inserting or updating data
      const auxQuery = theQuery.trim().toLowerCase();
      if (auxQuery.startsWith('insert') || auxQuery.startsWith('update') || auxQuery.startsWith('delete')) {
        queryCache.flushAll();
        queryCache.flushStats();
        logger.info(`the cache was flushed because of the query ${theQuery}`);
      }
      return result;
    } catch (error) {
      throw new Error(`Error executing query without cache  ${theQuery} error: ${error}`);
    }
  }
};

module.exports.execute = pool;

    
    

Photo by D.S. Chapman on Unsplash