Caching of nested cacheable operation via SpringCache

Question

I was given the task to make use of SpringCache for one of our services to reduce the number of DB lookups. While testing the implementation I noticed that some of the cache

Answer 1

The problem is that you are accessing methodA directly from methodB and therefore this prevents going through the Java proxies which handles the caching mechanims. Additionally, you did not add the @EnableCaching annotation, so there were actually no caching at all in your test.

The following test demonstrates that if you properly go through the proxies created by Spring, the nested cache pattern works as expected:

import static org.junit.Assert.*;

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Random;
import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger;

import javax.annotation.Resource;

import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.cache.CacheManager;
import org.springframework.cache.annotation.Cacheable;
import org.springframework.cache.annotation.EnableCaching;
import org.springframework.cache.concurrent.ConcurrentMapCache;
import org.springframework.cache.support.SimpleCacheManager;
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.test.annotation.DirtiesContext;
import org.springframework.test.context.ContextConfiguration;
import org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner;

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(classes = { SpringCacheTest.Config.class })
@DirtiesContext(classMode = DirtiesContext.ClassMode.AFTER_CLASS)
public class SpringCacheTest {

    private final static String CACHE_NAME = "testCache";
    private final static AtomicInteger methodInvocations = new AtomicInteger(0);

    public interface ICacheableService {

        String methodA(int length);

        String methodB(String name);
    }

    @Resource
    private ICacheableService cache;

    @Test
    public void testNestedCaching() {

        String name = "test";
        cache.methodB(name);
        assertEquals(methodInvocations.get(), 2);

        cache.methodA(name.length());
        // should only be 2 as methodA for this length was already invoked before
        assertEquals(methodInvocations.get(), 2);
    }

    @Configuration
    @EnableCaching
    public static class Config {

        @Bean
        public CacheManager getCacheManager() {
            SimpleCacheManager cacheManager = new SimpleCacheManager();
            cacheManager.setCaches(Arrays.asList(new ConcurrentMapCache(CACHE_NAME)));
            return cacheManager;
        }

        @Bean
        public ICacheableService getMockedEntityService() {
            return new ICacheableService() {
                private final Random random = new Random();

                @Autowired
                ApplicationContext context;

                @Override
                @Cacheable(value = CACHE_NAME, key = "#root.methodName.concat('_').concat(#p0)")
                public String methodA(int length) {
                    methodInvocations.incrementAndGet();
                    System.out.println("Invoking methodA");
                    char[] chars = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789".toCharArray();
                    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
                    for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
                        sb.append(chars[random.nextInt(chars.length)]);
                    }
                    String result = sb.toString();
                    System.out.println("Returning " + result + " for length: " + length);
                    return result;
                }

                @Override
                @Cacheable(value = CACHE_NAME, key = "#root.methodName.concat('_').concat(#p0)")
                public String methodB(String name) {
                    methodInvocations.incrementAndGet();
                    System.out.println("Invoking methodB");
                    ICacheableService cache = context.getBean(ICacheableService.class);
                    String rand = cache.methodA(name.length());
                    String result = name + "_" + rand;
                    System.out.println("Returning " + result + " for name: " + name);
                    return result;
                }
            };
        }
    }
}