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ei_cache

Stampede-resistant cache library for Erlang

Overview

A lot of caching libraries do not place a value into cache until its value has been resolved. If multiple requests for the same key arrive at the same time, they all see the missing value and they all work on resolving the value, rather than only the first one doing this.

The ei_cache library avoids this problem by having the first request for a missing key register a "promise" in its place. Concurrent requests for the same key will subscribe to this promise rather than attempt to resolve the value.

Using this library

Add the following to your project's rebar.config:

{deps, [
    {ei_cache, ".*",
     {git, "git://github.com/electricimp/ei_cache.git", {tag, "1.0.2"}}}
]}.

Or to mix.exs:

{:ei_cache, git: "https://github.com/electricimp/ei_cache.git", tag: "1.0.2"},

Is it ready for use?

Yes. We're using it in production at Electric Imp.

Using it

Cache = foo.
{ok, _} = ei_cache:start_link(Cache, fun(Key) -> lookup_key_somehow(Key) end).
% ... or add it to your supervision tree.

% Then, later...
Value = ei_cache:get_value(Cache, Key).

Metrics

By default, ei_cache reports metrics to an ETS table. You can get the current values with ei_cache_metrics:get_counts(Cache). Alternatively, you can report metrics to folsom by putting the following in your config file:

{ei_cache, [{metrics_module, ei_cache_metrics_folsom}]}

It reports the following metrics:

  • server_misses: Cache misses.
  • client_hits: First chance cache hits.
  • server_hits: Second chance cache hits.
  • client_promises: The client found a promise when querying the cache.
  • server_promises: The server found a promise when querying the cache. This is a "second chance" promise, more-or-less.
  • hits: client_hits + server_hits.
  • misses: server_misses + client_promises + server_promises.
  • requests: hits + missses.

The last three are aggregate metrics, because getting Graphite to report the cache hit/miss ratio from the other metrics is over-complicated.

A word on client vs. server: the whole point of this library is to avoid the bottleneck imposed by using a single gen_server, so the caller (client) does all of the ETS queries.

  • If the value is present, then that's a "client hit".
  • If the value isn't present, but there's already a query in flight, that's a "client promise".
  • If the value isn't present, and this is the first miss, then we call the gen_server. That -- usually -- results in a "server miss".
  • Sometimes, the client is racing for the same key and the server has either already found the value, or has already started a worker. Those are "server hit" and "server promise" respectively.

Caveats

  • There is no eviction strategy -- This is deliberate, though arguably naive. Use ei_cache:delete(Cache) to purge the cache.