Caching Data

Caching Data

Inject ICleverCache into your service and use GetOrCreate or GetOrCreateAsync — same pattern as IMemoryCache, with an extra type parameter that tells CleverCache which entity type owns this cache entry.

Basic usage

public class OrderService(ICleverCache cache, AppDbContext db)
{
    public async Task<List<Order>> GetAllAsync()
        => await cache.GetOrCreateAsync<Order, List<Order>>(
               "orders-all",
               async () => await db.Orders.ToListAsync()
           ) ?? [];
}

When any Order is saved (created, updated, or deleted) via EF Core, the "orders-all" entry is automatically evicted. The same applies if a type that Order is registered as a dependent of is saved — for example, if Customer is configured to cascade to Order, saving a Customer will also evict "orders-all".

Multiple types

If a cache entry contains data from more than one entity type, pass all relevant types — the entry will be evicted when any of them changes:

var summary = await cache.GetOrCreateAsync<List<OrderSummary>>(
    new[] { typeof(Order), typeof(Customer) },
    "order-summary",
    async () => await BuildSummaryAsync()
);

Entry options

All overloads accept an optional CleverCacheEntryOptions:

var options = new CleverCacheEntryOptions
{
    // Expire 10 minutes after creation
    AbsoluteExpirationRelativeToNow = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(10),

    // Or expire at a fixed point in time
    AbsoluteExpiration = DateTimeOffset.UtcNow.AddHours(1),

    // Extend lifetime on each read (memory cache only)
    SlidingExpiration = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(5),
};

var result = await cache.GetOrCreateAsync<Order, List<Order>>(
    "orders-all",
    async () => await db.Orders.ToListAsync(),
    options
);

Sliding expiration is only honoured by the memory cache provider. Distributed and Redis providers ignore it.

Manual removal

Remove a specific key:

cache.Remove("orders-all");

Remove all entries for a type (also cascades to dependent types — see Dependent Caches):

cache.RemoveByType<Order>();
// or
cache.RemoveByType(typeof(Order));