Module: ActionController::Caching::Fragments

Defined in:
lib/action_controller/caching.rb

Overview

Fragment caching is used for caching various blocks within templates without caching the entire action as a whole. This is useful when certain elements of an action change frequently or depend on complicated state while other parts rarely change or can be shared amongst multiple parties. The caching is doing using the cache helper available in the Action View. A template with caching might look something like:

<b>Hello <%= @name %></b>
<% cache do %>
  All the topics in the system:
  <%= render :partial => "topic", :collection => Topic.find(:all) %>
<% end %>

This cache will bind to the name of action that called it. So you would be able to invalidate it using expire_fragment(:controller => "topics", :action => "list") – if that was the controller/action used. This is not too helpful if you need to cache multiple fragments per action or if the action itself is cached using caches_action. So instead we should qualify the name of the action used with something like:

<% cache(:action => "list", :action_suffix => "all_topics") do %>

That would result in a name such as “/topics/list/all_topics”, which wouldn’t conflict with any action cache and neither with another fragment using a different suffix. Note that the URL doesn’t have to really exist or be callable. We’re just using the url_for system to generate unique cache names that we can refer to later for expirations. The expiration call for this example would be expire_fragment(:controller => "topics", :action => "list", :action_suffix => "all_topics").

Fragment stores

In order to use the fragment caching, you need to designate where the caches should be stored. This is done by assigning a fragment store of which there are four different kinds:

  • FileStore: Keeps the fragments on disk in the cache_path, which works well for all types of environments and shares the fragments for all the web server processes running off the same application directory.

  • MemoryStore: Keeps the fragments in memory, which is fine for WEBrick and for FCGI (if you don’t care that each FCGI process holds its own fragment store). It’s not suitable for CGI as the process is thrown away at the end of each request. It can potentially also take up a lot of memory since each process keeps all the caches in memory.

  • DRbStore: Keeps the fragments in the memory of a separate, shared DRb process. This works for all environments and only keeps one cache around for all processes, but requires that you run and manage a separate DRb process.

  • MemCacheStore: Works like DRbStore, but uses Danga’s MemCache instead. Requires the ruby-memcache library: gem install ruby-memcache.

Configuration examples (MemoryStore is the default):

ActionController::Base.fragment_cache_store = :memory_store
ActionController::Base.fragment_cache_store = :file_store, "/path/to/cache/directory"
ActionController::Base.fragment_cache_store = :drb_store, "druby://localhost:9192"
ActionController::Base.fragment_cache_store = :mem_cache_store, "localhost"
ActionController::Base.fragment_cache_store = MyOwnStore.new("parameter")

Defined Under Namespace

Modules: ThreadSafety Classes: DRbStore, FileStore, MemCacheStore, MemoryStore, UnthreadedFileStore, UnthreadedMemoryStore

Class Method Summary collapse

Instance Method Summary collapse

Class Method Details

.included(base) ⇒ Object

:nodoc:



308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
 
# File 'lib/action_controller/caching.rb', line 308

def self.included(base) #:nodoc:
  base.class_eval do
    @@fragment_cache_store = MemoryStore.new
    cattr_reader :fragment_cache_store

    def self.fragment_cache_store=(store_option)
      store, *parameters = *([ store_option ].flatten)
      @@fragment_cache_store = if store.is_a?(Symbol)
        store_class_name = (store == :drb_store ? "DRbStore" : store.to_s.camelize)
        store_class = ActionController::Caching::Fragments.const_get(store_class_name)
        store_class.new(*parameters)
      else
        store
      end
    end
  end
end

Instance Method Details

#cache_erb_fragment(block, name = {}, options = nil) ⇒ Object

Called by CacheHelper#cache



331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
 
# File 'lib/action_controller/caching.rb', line 331

def cache_erb_fragment(block, name = {}, options = nil)
  unless perform_caching then block.call; return end

  buffer = eval("_erbout", block.binding)

  if cache = read_fragment(name, options)
    buffer.concat(cache)
  else
    pos = buffer.length
    block.call
    write_fragment(name, buffer[pos..-1], options)
  end
end

#expire_fragment(name, options = nil) ⇒ Object

Name can take one of three forms:

  • String: This would normally take the form of a path like “pages/45/notes”

  • Hash: Is treated as an implicit call to url_for, like { :controller => “pages”, :action => “notes”, :id => 45 }

  • Regexp: Will destroy all the matched fragments, example:

    %r{pages/\d*/notes}

    Ensure you do not specify start and finish in the regex (^$) because the actual filename matched looks like ./cache/filename/path.cache Regexp expiration is not supported on caches which can’t iterate over all keys, such as memcached.



373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
 
# File 'lib/action_controller/caching.rb', line 373

def expire_fragment(name, options = nil)
  return unless perform_caching

  key = fragment_cache_key(name)

  if key.is_a?(Regexp)
    self.class.benchmark "Expired fragments matching: #{key.source}" do
      fragment_cache_store.delete_matched(key, options)
    end
  else
    self.class.benchmark "Expired fragment: #{key}" do
      fragment_cache_store.delete(key, options)
    end
  end
end

#expire_matched_fragments(matcher = /.*/, options = nil) ⇒ Object

Deprecated – just call expire_fragment with a regular expression



390
391
392
 
# File 'lib/action_controller/caching.rb', line 390

def expire_matched_fragments(matcher = /.*/, options = nil) #:nodoc:
  expire_fragment(matcher, options)
end

#fragment_cache_key(name) ⇒ Object 



326
327
328
 
# File 'lib/action_controller/caching.rb', line 326

def fragment_cache_key(name)
  name.is_a?(Hash) ? url_for(name).split("://").last : name
end

#read_fragment(name, options = nil) ⇒ Object 



355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
 
# File 'lib/action_controller/caching.rb', line 355

def read_fragment(name, options = nil)
  return unless perform_caching

  key = fragment_cache_key(name)
  self.class.benchmark "Fragment read: #{key}" do
    fragment_cache_store.read(key, options)
  end
end

#write_fragment(name, content, options = nil) ⇒ Object 



345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
 
# File 'lib/action_controller/caching.rb', line 345

def write_fragment(name, content, options = nil)
  return unless perform_caching

  key = fragment_cache_key(name)
  self.class.benchmark "Cached fragment: #{key}" do
    fragment_cache_store.write(key, content, options)
  end
  content
end