CacheXt

A C# Cache Extensions library to:

• Expose a simple cache abstraction (ICacheWrapper) so different cache providers can be used through same common interface
• Utility and helper method(s) to assist with common/tricky cache operations

At this stage this project only provides two implementations:

• NCache from Alachisoft (R)
• Null Cache (i.e. a disabled cache).

Helper Methods

The following helper methods are currently implemented:

• UpdateWithLock:

  A helper method (UpdateWithLock) is also provided to assist with using locking in NCache to update and/or initialize a value in NCache. In particular, the use of locking is poorly documented in NCache and having a concurrent-safe operation took some trial and error.

  The following example will run parallel threads to concatenate a list of values 1-16. Without locking, the string would not contain all numbers 1-16; but with locking, all will be there (not necessarily in sequential order!)

   TimeSpan lockTimeout = new TimeSpan(0,1,0);
   Enumerable.Range(1, 16)
   			.AsParallel()
   			.WithExecutionMode(ParallelExecutionMode.ForceParallelism)
   			.AsUnordered()
   			.WithDegreeOfParallelism(16)
   			.ForAll(n => TestOperation(key1, n, lockTimeout));
   			
   ...
   
   private static void TestOperation(string key1, int n, TimeSpan lockTimeout)
   {
   	cacheWrapper.UpdateWithLock(
   		key1,
   		() => string.Empty, 
   		x => string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(x) ? n.ToString() : string.Format("{0};{1}", x, n),
   		lockTimeout);
   }