.NET 4 Caching Support

Question

I understand the .NET 4 Framework has caching support built into it. Does anyone have any experience with this, or could provide good resources to learn more about this?

Answer 1

MemoryCache in the framework is a good place to start, but you might also like to consider LazyCache because it has a simpler API than memory cache and has built in locking as well as some other nice features. It is available on nuget: PM> Install-Package LazyCache

// Create our cache service using the defaults (Dependency injection ready).
// Uses MemoryCache.Default as default so cache is shared between instances
IAppCache cache = new CachingService();

// Declare (but don't execute) a func/delegate whose result we want to cache
Func<ComplexObjects> complexObjectFactory = () => methodThatTakesTimeOrResources();

// Get our ComplexObjects from the cache, or build them in the factory func 
// and cache the results for next time under the given key
ComplexObject cachedResults = cache.GetOrAdd("uniqueKey", complexObjectFactory);

I recently wrote this article about getting started with caching in dot net that you may find useful.

(Disclaimer: I am the author of LazyCache)

Answer 2

Hope you are referring to System.Runtime.Caching of .Netframework 4.0

Below link is the good starting point: Here

Answer 3

I've not made use of it myself, but if you're just caching simple objects in memory, you're probably referring to the MemoryCache class, in the System.Runtime.Caching namespace. There is a little example of how to use it at the end of the page.

Edit: To make it look like I've actually done some work for this answer, here's the sample from that page! :)

private void btnGet_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    ObjectCache cache = MemoryCache.Default;
    string fileContents = cache["filecontents"] as string;

    if (fileContents == null)
    {
        CacheItemPolicy policy = new CacheItemPolicy();

        List<string> filePaths = new List<string>();
        filePaths.Add("c:\\cache\\example.txt");

        policy.ChangeMonitors.Add(new 
        HostFileChangeMonitor(filePaths));

        // Fetch the file contents.
        fileContents = 
            File.ReadAllText("c:\\cache\\example.txt");

        cache.Set("filecontents", fileContents, policy);
    }

    Label1.Text = fileContents;
}

It's interesting because it shows that you can apply dependencies to the cache, much like in the classic ASP.NET cache. The big difference here is that you don't have a dependency on the System.Web assembly.

Answer 4

MSDN article "ASP.NET Caching: Techniques and Best Practices" is a great start.

Answer 5

I assume you are getting at this, System.Runtime.Caching, similar to the System.Web.Caching and in a more general namespace.

See http://deanhume.com/Home/BlogPost/object-caching----net-4/37

and on the stack,

is-there-some-sort-of-cachedependency-in-system-runtime-caching and,

performance-of-system-runtime-caching.

Could be useful.