SuperCache - An in-house cache we build for our product

SuperCache Intro

For build a realtime & low latency application by using Phoenix & Elixir we make a library for cache data in memory. In time we started to build our product we didn't find a good cache library then we desired to build a new cache library with name SuperCache by Elixir.

SuperCache is simple library based on Ets table (from Erlang), each table for each partition for improving performance in case a lot of processes access to.

Almost functions are same style with Ets function for people can easy to use (if people have worked with Ets before).

Why we build cache that based on Ets? It's because in the early of our product, we using tuple a lot then it is perfect for us build a cache with Ets style, we can query with key/value style or by pattern matching. And another reason is Ets has a long time and it is stable & fast enough for us.

With SuperCache we are easy to share data between processes or between applications (we will add support cluster in the future). This important thing help us so much for reduce time to develop & reduce complexity of our system.

Belong with Ets style we add support for Key/Value, Stack, Queue struct with multi instances of each for convenience when working with shared global data.

Features

Cache with Ets style and have partitions that can configuration in runtime. Cache is a global data in node then any process from any application run on node can access. You can choose a Ets table type if need.

Key/Value memory database for simple tasks, supported multi instance of key/value with easy to use and can access from any process in node. Key/Value spreads all it data in all partitions by key (calculated by hash order of Erlang).

Queue (FIFO), supported multi global queues with much more simple to use. Remember one thing, that is a queue store all it data in a partition then you can access it by match/match_object if need!.

Stack (FILO), same with Queue.

Note: For Key/Value, Queue, Stack when get data it can have default value (nil if you don't put to argument) for case no data in it.

Guide

It's very easy to use.

First, add to deps:

def deps do
  [
    {:super_cache, "~> 0.6.0"}
  ]
end

Second, start the cache:

SuperCache.start!()

Default, number of partitions is a number of online_schedulers of Erlang VM.

You can run with options like:

opts = [key_pos: 0, partition_pos: 1, table_type: :bag, num_partition: 3]
SuperCache.start!(opts)

Now, you can use the APIs of lib.

SuperCache.put!({:hello, :world, "hello world!"})

SuperCache.get_by_key_partition!(:hello, :world)

SuperCache.delete_by_key_partition!(:hello, :world)

KV example (after started cache lib):

alias SuperCache.KeyValue, as: KV
KV.add("my_kv", :key_a, "Hello")
data = KV.get("my_kv", :key_a)
IO.puts "#{inspect data}"

Queue example (after started cache lib):

alias SuperCache.Queue, as: Q
Q.add("my_queue", "new_task")
task = Q.out("my_queue")
IO.puts "new task: #{inspect task}"

Stack example (after started cache lib):

alias SuperCache.Stack, as: S
S.push("my_stack", :hello)
data = S.pop("my_stack", :no_data)
IO.puts "data: #{inspect data}"

Library is still developing and battle test before go to product but you can try!

Source is available on Github