Update/Insert Existing Data in Cache
NCache provides the Insert
method and its overloads to facilitate updating objects in the cache. While it overwrites data for existing items, it also adds the item to the cache if the key does not exist in the cache.
Prerequisites
- To learn about the standard prerequisites required to work with all NCache client-side features, please refer to the given page on Client-Side API Prerequisites.
- For API details, refer to: ICache, CacheItemVersion, CacheItem, Insert, Get, InsertBulk, InsertAsync.
Update Object in Cache
Note
This feature is also available in NCache Professional.
You can update a custom object in the cache using various overloads of the Insert
method. This returns a CacheItemVersion
.
Important
- If the key already exists, it will overwrite the existing cache item with the same key.
- If the key does not exist, the operation adds the item to the cache instead.
Note
To ensure the operation is fail-safe, it is recommended to handle any potential exceptions within your application, as explained in Handling Failures.
The following example gets the values of an existing object and inserts it against the same key into the cache. If the key does not exist, it adds it to the cache.
// Precondition: Cache is already connected
string customerKey = "ALFKI";
// Get updated product from database against given product ID
Customer customer = FetchProductFromDB("ALFKI");
// Insert Product object to cache
CacheItemVersion version = cache.Insert(customerKey, customer);
// Item updated in cache successfully
Update Object With Expiration
Note
This feature is also available in NCache Professional.
CacheItem
is a custom class provided by NCache that can be used to add data to the cache and also lets you set additional specifications associated with an object as properties of this class. The CacheItem is updated in the cache against a unique key.
Important
- If the key already exists, it will overwrite the existing cache item with the same key.
- If the key does not exist, the operation adds the item to the cache instead.
The following example gets updated values of an existing CacheItem and inserts it against the same key into the cache. If the key does not exist, it adds it to the cache.
string customerKey = $"Customer:ALFKI";
Customer customer = FetchCustomerFromDB("ALFKI");
// Update Customer's Phone
customer.Phone = "0921-12 34 65";
// Create CacheItem
CacheItem cacheItem = new CacheItem(customer);
cacheItem.Expiration = new Expiration(ExpirationType.Sliding, TimeSpan.FromMinutes(5));
// Update cutsomer in DB and Cache
if (UpdateDB(customer))
{
cache.Insert(customerKey, cacheItem);
}
Update Bulk Items in Cache
Note
This feature is also available in NCache Professional.
InsertBulk
updates an array of CacheItem
to the cache against the corresponding key. The method returns a dictionary of all the keys that failed to update, along with the failure reason.
Important
If any keys fail to update, their reasons of failure will be returned as an IDictionary
.
The following code example fetches an array of products (of Customer type) from the database. The products are then inserted to the cache as a dictionary of keys and CacheItem
using InsertBulk
.
// Create an array of all Customer Keys
String[] keys = new String[]
{
"Customer:ALFKI", "Customer:ANATR", "Customer:ANTON", "Customer:AROUT", "Customer:BERGS"
};
// Get items from cache
IDictionary<string, Customer> itemsFetched = cache.GetBulk<Customer>(keys);
//Create a dictionary to store updated items
IDictionary<string, CacheItem> itemsUpdated = new Dictionary<string, CacheItem>();
// Update postal codes of dictionary items
foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Customer> item in itemsFetched)
{
//Update Postal Code
item.Value.PostalCode = "05023";
// Create CacheItem of updated Customer object
CacheItem updatedCacheItem = new CacheItem(item.Value);
// Add uCacheItem to dictionary
itemsUpdated.Add(item.Key,updatedCacheItem);
}
if (UpdateDB(itemsUpdated))
{
// Insert updated bulk items to Cache
IDictionary<string, Exception> keysFailedToInsert = cache.InsertBulk(itemsUpdated);
if (keysFailedToInsert.Count > 0)
{
foreach (KeyValuePair<string, Exception> keyFailedToInsert in keysFailedToInsert)
Console.WriteLine($"Could not update Item {keyFailedToInsert.Key} in cache due to error : {keyFailedToInsert.Value}");
}
}
Update Objects with Asynchronous API
InsertAsync
returns the object of the Task class which can further be used according to the business needs of the client application.
string customerKey = $"Customer:ALFKI";
// Get customer from database if not found in cache
if (customer == null)
customer = FetchCustomerFromDB("ALFKI");
// Update customer's Phone
customer.Phone = "12345-6789";
// Update cutsomer in DB and Cache
if (UpdateDB(customer))
{
// Adding item asynchronously.
Task<CacheItemVersion> task = cache.InsertAsync(customerKey, customer);
// This task object can be used as per your business needs
if (task.IsCompleted)
{
// Get CacheItemVersion object from task result
CacheItemVersion version = task.Result;
Console.WriteLine($"Item {customer.CustomerID} has been updated with verion {version.Version}.");
}
}
Additional Resources
NCache provides a sample application for Basic Operations on GitHub.
See Also
.NET: Alachisoft.NCache.Client namespace.
Java: com.alachisoft.ncache.client namespace.
Python: ncache.client class.
Node.js: Cache class.