http_cache v0.3.0

View Source http_cache

http_cache is a stateless Erlang HTTP caching library that implements the various HTTP RFCs related to caching.

When caching, it analyses the response along with the associated request to determine whether the response is cacheable, and caches it if so.

When looking up cached responses, it analyses the request and finds the most suitable response (that is, response that is the freshest and conforms to the vary header).

It supports invalidating cached responses:

  • by URL
  • by alternate key

It also supports:

  • automatically compressing and decompressing with gzip. It allows saving space when storing response and reducing transmission time
  • replying to conditional requests
  • replying to range requests

Finally, many telemetry events are emitted. See the documentation of the main module.

usage

 Usage 

1> Req = {<<"GET">>, <<"http://example.org">>, [], <<>>}.
{<<"GET">>,<<"http://example.org">>,[],<<>>}

2> Resp = {200, [{<<"content-type">>, <<"text/plain">>}], <<"Cache me">>}.
{200,[{<<"content-type">>,<<"text/plain">>}],<<"Cache me">>}

3> Opts = #{store => http_cache_store_process, type => shared}.
#{store => http_cache_store_process, type => shared}

4> http_cache:cache(Req, Resp, Opts).
{ok,{200,
     [{<<"content-type">>,<<"text/plain">>},
      {<<"content-length">>,<<"8">>}],
     <<"Cache me">>}}

5> http_cache:get(Req, Opts).
{fresh,{{<<21,255,141,93,218,86,217,58,55,246,85,151,223,
           133,134,248,212,121,102,151,176,244,210,11,46,
           ...>>,
         #{}},
        {200,
         [{<<"content-type">>,<<"text/plain">>},
          {<<"content-length">>,<<"8">>},
          {<<"age">>,<<"10">>}],
         <<"Cache me">>}}}

6> http_cache:get(Req, Opts).
{must_revalidate,{{<<21,255,141,93,218,86,217,58,55,246,
                     85,151,223,133,134,248,212,121,102,
                     151,176,244,210,11,46,...>>,
                   #{}},
                  {200,
                   [{<<"content-type">>,<<"text/plain">>},
                    {<<"content-length">>,<<"8">>},
                    {<<"age">>,<<"218">>}],
                   <<"Cache me">>}}}

7> http_cache:get(Req, Opts).
miss

http_cache-pro-versions

 http_cache* pro versions

Advanced HTTP caching features are available as licensed packages:

Refer to these links for technical insights and license information.

store-backends

 Store backends

Responses have to be stored in a separate store backend (this library being stateless), such as:

Both are cluster-aware.

header-normalisation

 Header normalisation

This library may store different responses for the same URL, following the directives of the "vary" header. For instance, if a response can be returned in English or in French, both versions can be cached as long as the "vary" header is correctly used.

This can unfortunately result in an explosion of stored responses if the headers are not normalized. For instance, in this scenario where a site handles both these languages, a response will be stored for any of these requests that include an accept-language header:

  • fr-CH, fr;q=0.9, en;q=0.8, de;q=0.7, *;q=0.5
  • fr-CH, fr;q=0.9, en;q=0.8, de;q=0.7,*;q=0.5
  • en
  • de
  • en, de
  • en, de, fr
  • en;q=1, de
  • en;q=1, de;q=0.9
  • en;q=1, de;q=0.8
  • en;q=1, de;q=0.7
  • en;q=1, de;q=0.6
  • en;q=1, de;q=0.5

and so on, so potentially hundreds of stored responses for only 2 available responses (English or French versions).

In this case, you probably want to apply normalization before caching, that is modify the accept-language header to have only the en or fr value set before using this library.

See Best practices for using the Vary header for more guidance regarding this issue.

support

 Support

OTP24+

RFC5861 (stale-if-error and stale-while-revalidate cache directives) is supported on latest development branch of cowlib (since this commit) or in other words from version 2.12 (not released yet as April, 2022). Manually override dependency if you need to use it (you can take a look at this project's rebar.config file).

conformance

 Conformance

RFC9111: HTTP Caching:

  • [ ] 3. Storing Responses in Caches
    • [x] 3.1. Storing Header and Trailer Fields
    • [x] 3.2. Updating Stored Header Fields
    • [ ] 3.3. Storing Incomplete Responses
    • [ ] 3.4. Combining Partial Content
    • [x] 3.5. Storing Responses to Authenticated Requests
  • [x] 4. Constructing Responses from Caches
    • [x] 4.1. Calculating Secondary Keys with Vary
    • [x] 4.2. Freshness
      • [x] 4.2.1. Calculating Freshness Lifetime
      • [x] 4.2.2. Calculating Heuristic Freshness
      • [x] 4.2.3. Calculating Age
      • [x] 4.2.4. Serving Stale Responses
    • [x] 4.3. Validation
      • [x] 4.3.1. Sending a Validation Request
      • [x] 4.3.2. Handling a Received Validation Request
      • [x] 4.3.3. Handling a Validation Response
      • [x] 4.3.4. Freshening Stored Responses upon Validation
      • [x] 4.3.5. Freshening Responses via HEAD
    • [x] 4.4. Invalidating Stored Responses
  • [ ] 5. Header Field Definitions
    • [x] 5.1. Age
    • [x] 5.2. Cache-Control
      • [x] 5.2.1. Request Cache-Control Directives
        • [x] 5.2.1.1. max-age
        • [x] 5.2.1.2. max-stale
        • [x] 5.2.1.3. min-fresh
        • [x] 5.2.1.4. no-cache
        • [x] 5.2.1.5. no-store
        • [x] 5.2.1.6. no-transform
        • [x] 5.2.1.7. only-if-cached
      • [ ] 5.2.2. Response Cache-Control Directives
        • [x] 5.2.2.1. max-age
        • [x] 5.2.2.2. must-revalidate
        • [x] 5.2.2.3. must-understand: http_cache only caches responses that have a known status code
        • [x] 5.2.2.4. no-cache: only unqualified form is supported
        • [x] 5.2.2.5. no-store
        • [x] 5.2.2.6. no-transform
        • [x] 5.2.2.7. private" only unqualified form is supported
        • [x] 5.2.2.8. proxy-revalidate
        • [x] 5.2.2.9. public
        • [x] 5.2.2.10. s-maxage
      • [ ] 5.2.3. Cache Control Extensions
      • [ ] 5.2.4. Cache Directive Registry
    • [x] 5.3. Expires
    • [x] 5.4. Pragma
    • [ ] 5.5. Warning

RFC5861: HTTP Cache-Control Extensions for Stale Content

  • [x] 3. The stale-while-revalidate Cache-Control Extension
  • [x] 4. The stale-if-error Cache-Control Extension

(Only with the latest cowlib code, see comment above.)

RFC9110: HTTP Semantics

  • [ ] 13. Conditional Requests
    • [ ] 13.1. Preconditions
      • [ ] 13.1.1. If-Match
      • [x] 13.1.2. If-None-Match
      • [x] 13.1.3. If-Modified-Since
      • [ ] 13.1.4. If-Unmodified-Since
      • [x] 13.1.5. If-Range
    • [x] 13.2. Evaluation of Preconditions
      • [x] 13.2.1. When to Evaluate
      • [x] 13.2.2. Precedence of Preconditions
  • [ ] 14. Range Units
    • [x] 14.1. Byte Ranges
      • [x] 14.1.1. Range Specifiers
      • [x] 14.1.2. Byte Ranges
    • [x] 14.2. Range
    • [x] 14.3. Accept-Ranges
    • [ ] 14.4. Content-Range
    • [ ] 14.5. Partial PUT
    • [x] 14.6. Media Type multipart/byteranges

contributing

 Contributing

Format with rebar3 format. Pay attention that some lines of the macros in src/http_cache.erl must be manually edited because of an issue in the format plugin.