cachemere

0.9.13 • Public • Published

Cachemere

A nice, smooth, cushiony layer of cache.

Cachemere is a static file fetching/caching engine which greatly reduces the number of disk I/O operations and eases the CPU load on your server. Cachemere caches preprocessed and/or compressed file contents and updates them when the related files change on the file system. By default, Cachemere also generates necessary ETag headers for client-side caching - Default headers can be modified as required before being sent.

To install, run:

npm install cachemere

==================

Basic example (fetches a file from disk or cache):

var cachemere = require('cachemere');
var http = require('http');
 
var server = http.createServer(function (req, res) {
    cachemere.fetch(req, function (err, resource) {
        /*
        Note that you can manipulate the Resource object's 
        properties before outputting it to the response.
        */
        resource.output(res);
    });
});
 
server.listen(8000);

==================

API

Top-level

These are exposed by require('cachemere'):

Events
  • ready
    • Emitted when all pending resources have been cached.
  • hit
    • Emitted when a resource is fetched from cache
    • Arguments
      • url: A resource URL
  • miss
    • Emitted when a resource misses the cache and is fetched from disk
    • Arguments
      • url: A resource URL
  • notice
    • Emitted when Cachemere encounters a notice error - These errors are very low importance - For example, fetching a file which does not exist will cause a notice to be emitted.
    • Arguments
      • err: An instance of Error with an additional property 'type' which can be 'read' (cachemere.ERROR_TYPE_READ), 'compress' (cachemere.ERROR_TYPE_COMPRESS) or 'prep' (cachemere.ERROR_TYPE_PREP).
  • error
    • Emitted when Cachemere encounters an error - These errors don't need to be handled explicitly since Cachemere handles them internally - This event is mostly for logging purposes.
    • Arguments
      • err: An instance of Error with an additional property 'type' which can be 'read' (cachemere.ERROR_TYPE_READ), 'compress' (cachemere.ERROR_TYPE_COMPRESS) or 'prep' (cachemere.ERROR_TYPE_PREP).
Methods
  • init

    • Resets and initializes Cachemere with an options object.
    • Parameters
      • Object: (Optional) An options object which Cachemere will use to configure itself. The options object can have the following properties:
        • compress: (Optional) A boolean which indicates whether or not to use GZIP compression. Defaults to true.
        • useETags: (Optional) A boolean which indicates whether or not to use ETags. ETag values are based on file content hash. Defaults to true.
        • ignoreQueryString: (Optional) A boolean which indicates whether or not to remove query strings from URLs before doing any processing. Defaults to true.
        • mapper: (Optional) A function which maps any given URL to a path on the file system. The default mapper interprets URLs as paths relative to the application's main file.
        • classifier: (Optional) A function which decides how a resource should be cached. Takes a URL as the first argument and cachemere as the second argument. Must return either cachemere.CACHE_TYPE_NONE, cachemere.CACHE_TYPE_WEAK or cachemere.CACHE_TYPE_STRONG depending on the type of caching you want to use for that resource.
        • maxSize: (Optional) An integer which indicates the total maximum size of the server cache in bytes. Cachemere will automatically clear least-accessed resources from cache in order to meet the maxSize requirement. Defaults to 1000000000 (1GB).
        • maxEntrySize: (Optional) An integer which indicates the maximum size of a single cache entry in bytes. If a file exceeds this size, it will not be cached. Defaults to 10000000 (10MB).
        • delayFileUpdate: (Optional) An integer which specifies how many milliseconds to delay a cache file update operation - This is to mitigate potential issues related to how various editors save files to disk. Defaults to 1000.
        • cacheLife: (Optional) An integer which specifies how long (in seconds) a cold CACHE_TYPE_WEAK cache entry should be kept in cache. Defaults to 3600 - One hour.
  • fetch

    • Fetches a file from cache or from the file system if not already cached. The act of fetching the file for the first time will cause Cachemere to cache it and watch that file for any changes.
    • Parameters
      • http.IncomingMessage: An HTTP request object (like the 'req' object passed to a HTTP request handler).
      • Function: A callback in the form function(err, resource) - The second argument is a cachemere.Resource object. The resource object can be manipulated and it can be output to a HTTP response. See the documentation about the Resource class below. If an err is present, it will be of type Error but with an added 'type' property which gives you details about the stage of caching in which the error occurred (read, preprocess or compress).
  • set

    • Associates a URL with some content (string or Buffer) - When fetch is called on that URL, the content specified here will be served. This method can be used to override a file's real content.
    • Parameters
      • options: An object which can have the following fields:
        • url: The URL on which to serve the specified content
        • content: A string or Buffer
        • mime: The mime type of the content
        • permanent: Whether or not this content is permanent or should be overriden with new content when the related file changes on the file system (assuming that there is such a file).
        • preprocessed: An optional boolean - If this is true, the supplied content will not be preprocessed again before being cached.
  • setRaw

    • Associates a URL with some raw content (string or Buffer) - When fetch is called on that URL, the content specified here will be served - Cachemere will not touch the file system.
    • Parameters
      • url: The URL on which to serve the specified content
      • content: A string or Buffer
      • mime: The mime type of the content
  • setPrepProvider

    • Allows you to specify an optional preprocessor provider. If no prep provider is set, then Cachemere will not preprocess any of your files' contents before caching them.
    • Parameters
      • Function: A function which takes a URL as argument and returns a preprocessor function which will be used by Cachemere to preprocess that file's content. To skip preprocessing for a particular URL, this function should return null. A preprocessor function is in the form function(resourceData, callback) - Where resourceData is an object with a url, path and content property (Note that the content property holds the file's content as a Buffer). The preprocessor function can return (either using a return statement or asynchronously via callback) either a string or a Buffer. The returned value will be cached as the file's preprocessed content (just make sure you only return/callback once). Note that the callback is in the form callback(err, content) - The err argument should be null if the operation went smoothly.

    Example (synchronous):

    var textFileRegex = /\.txt$/;
     
    var textPrep = function (resource) {
        // Note that resource.content is a Buffer not a string
        var data = resource.content.toString().replace(/[.]/g, '!');
        return data;
    };
     
    cachemere.setPrepProvider(function (url) {
        // Only preprocess files with .txt extension
        if (textFileRegex.test(url)) {
            return textPrep;
        }
        return false;
    });

    Example (asynchronous):

    var textFileRegex = /\.txt$/;
     
    var textPrep = function (resource, callback) {
        // Note that resource.content is a Buffer not a string
        var data = resource.content.toString().replace(/[.]/g, '!');
        setTimeout(function () {
            /* 
                Here we are delaying the preprocessing by 1 second and returning asynchronously.
                Not a very useful case, but hopefully you get the idea...
                Note that if an attempt is made to fetch a resource while it is in the middle of 
                being preprocessed/cached, that fetch request will be queued until the resource is available. 
                This will show up as latency when the resource is accessed by a client for the very 
                first time - For this reason, you should make sure that the preprocessing doesn't take too 
                long to callback - If it does, you may want to perform preprocessing as a background task instead 
                and use the cachemere.set() method when the preprocessing is done.
            */
            callback(null, data);
        }, 1000);
    };
     
    cachemere.setPrepProvider(function (url) {
        // Only preprocess files with .txt extension
        if (textFileRegex.test(url)) {
            return textPrep;
        }
        return false;
    });
  • getPrepProvider

    • Returns the preprocessor provider which is currently active.

Resource

A resource object is a representation of a resource on disk or in cache. This resource can be output directly to an HTTP response object. Note that you can manipulate any of the properties of a Resource before outputting it to a response in order to customize the behaviour.

Properties
  • status (Number): The status of the HTTP response associated with this resource.
  • headers (Object): An object representing headers which will be sent along with this resource's content. Feel free to add additional headers as required.
  • content (Buffer): The resource's content as a Buffer.
Methods
  • output
    • Automatically writes the resource's content and any associated headers to the HTTP response object.
    • Parameters
      • http.ServerResponse: A response object to output the resource's data to (status, headers and content will be sent).

Package Sidebar

Install

npm i cachemere

Weekly Downloads

2

Version

0.9.13

License

none

Last publish

Collaborators

  • topcloudsystems