expiring_value.md

ExpiringValue

Value that is instantiated on-demand and cached for a limited time.

Overview

ExpiringValue is a container for a value that is instantiated on-demand (lazy-loaded via factory) and cached for a limited time. Once the cache expires, the factory is used again on next demand to get a fresh version.

In Lambda functions, it is useful to cache some data in instance memory to avoid recomputing or fetching data on every invocation. In the early days of Lambda, instances only lasted 15 minutes and thus set an upper-limit on how stale the cached data could be. With instances now seen to last for many hours, a mechanism is needed to deal with refreshing stale content - thus ExpiringValue was born.

ExpiringValue is not limited to Lambdas, though. Use it anywhere you want to cache a value for a limited time. It even works in the browser for client code.

A good use is with StateStorage, to load configuration and cache it, but force the refresh of that configuration periodically.

Install

npm install @sailplane/expiring-value

Typescript Declarations

expiring-value.d.ts

Example

Simplistic example of using ExpiringValue to build an HTTP cache:

const CACHE_PERIOD = 90_000; // 90 seconds
const https = new AwsHttps();
const cache = {};

export function fetchWithCache(url: string): Promise<any> {
    if (!cache[url]) {
        cache[url] = new ExpiringValue<any>(() => loadData(url), CACHE_PERIOD);
    }

    return cache[url].get();
}

function loadData(url: string): any {
    const req = https.buildRequest('GET', new URL(url));
    return https.request(req);
}

See examples for another example.