🔥 Boost Your Spring Boot App Performance with Caching: A Comprehensive Guide to Spring Boot Caching 🔥

Hazzy | springworld.xyz
4 min readMar 21, 2023

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Spring caching is an essential feature of the Spring framework, which provides a simple and effective way to cache the results of time-consuming operations. In this blog post, we will take a deep dive into how Spring caching works and explore its different parts.

What is Spring Caching?

Spring caching is a caching abstraction that provides a consistent programming model for different caching solutions. It enables developers to cache the results of expensive operations in memory, which reduces the need to re-execute the operation every time it is requested. By caching frequently accessed data, Spring caching helps to improve application performance and reduce response times.

How does Spring Caching Work? Spring caching works by intercepting the method calls and checking if the method result is already cached. If the result is cached, then the cached value is returned instead of executing the method again. If the result is not cached, then the method is executed, and the result is cached for future use.

Spring caching uses different cache managers to manage the caching operations. A cache manager is responsible for creating, managing, and destroying caches. Spring provides several built-in cache managers, such as ConcurrentMapCacheManager, EhCacheCacheManager, and RedisCacheManager.

Annotations Used in Spring Caching Spring caching uses different annotations to specify the caching behavior of a method. These annotations include:

  1. @Cacheable: This annotation is used to indicate that the method results should be cached. When a method is annotated with @Cacheable, Spring checks if the result is already cached. If the result is cached, then the cached value is returned, and the method is not executed.
  2. @CachePut: This annotation is used to indicate that the method result should be cached, regardless of whether it is already cached or not. When a method is annotated with @CachePut, Spring executes the method and caches the result.
  3. @CacheEvict: This annotation is used to indicate that the cache should be cleared. When a method is annotated with @CacheEvict, Spring removes the cached value for the specified key.
  4. @Caching: This annotation is used to apply multiple cache annotations to a method. With @Caching, you can specify multiple caching behaviors for a method.

Example:

@Service
public class MyService {

@Cacheable(value = "myCache", key = "#id")
public String getFromCacheOrService(String id) {
// This method will be cached
// If the value is not in the cache, it will be computed and added to the cache
return someExpensiveOperation(id);
}

@CachePut(value = "myCache", key = "#id")
public void updateCache(String id, String value) {
// This method will update the value in the cache
}

@CacheEvict(value = "myCache", key = "#id")
public void removeFromCache(String id) {
// This method will remove the value from the cache
}
}

In this example, the @Cacheable annotation is used to cache the results of the getFromCacheOrService method. The value attribute specifies the name of the cache, and the key attribute specifies the key used to store the value in the cache. If the value is not in the cache, the someExpensiveOperation method is called to compute the value, which is then added to the cache.

The @CachePut annotation is used to update the value in the cache, and the @CacheEvict annotation is used to remove the value from the cache.

Note that you’ll need to configure a cache manager bean in your Spring Boot application in order to use caching. Here’s an example configuration using the ConcurrentMapCacheManager:

@Configuration
@EnableCaching
public class CacheConfig {

@Bean
public CacheManager cacheManager() {
return new ConcurrentMapCacheManager("myCache");
}
}

This configuration enables caching using the @EnableCaching annotation, and creates a cache manager bean that uses the ConcurrentMapCacheManager implementation to manage the cache named "myCache".

How spring caching works internally

Interception of Method Calls Spring caching works by intercepting the method calls and checking if the method result is already cached. This is done using AOP (Aspect Oriented Programming), which enables cross-cutting concerns to be added to an application. Spring AOP uses proxies to intercept method calls and add additional behavior to them.

When a method is called, Spring checks if it is marked with any of the caching annotations. If the method is marked with a caching annotation, then Spring creates a proxy for the method and adds caching behavior to it. The proxy intercepts the method call and checks if the result is already cached. If the result is cached, then the cached value is returned. If the result is not cached, then the method is executed, and the result is cached.

Conclusion In conclusion,

Spring caching is a powerful feature of the Spring framework that enables developers to cache the results of time-consuming operations. Spring caching works by intercepting the method calls and checking if the method result is already cached. If the result is cached, then the cached value is returned instead of executing the method again. Spring caching uses different annotations to specify the caching behavior of a method, such as @Cacheable, @CachePut, @CacheEvict, and @Caching. Spring caching is a powerful tool for improving application performance and reducing response times.

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Hazzy | springworld.xyz

Experienced Java developer turned blogger, passionate about sharing insights and best practices on all things Java.