Copyright (C) 2001 DeWitt Clinton All Rights Reserved You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file. NAME Cache::Cache DESCRIPTION The Perl Cache package provides Cache::Cache, a generic interface for creating persistent data stores. This interface is implemented by the Cache::MemoryCache, Cache::SharedMemoryCache, Cache::FileCache, Cache::SizeAwareFileCache, Cache::SizeAwareMemoryCache, and Cache::SizeAwareSharedMemoryCache classes. This work replaces File::Cache and IPC::Cache. REQUIREMENTS Digest::MD5 File::Spec File::Path IPC::ShareLite Storable INSTALLATION perl Makefile.PL make make test make install USAGE First, choose the best type of cache implementation for your needs. The simplest cache is the MemoryCache, which is suitable for applications that are serving multiple sequential requests, and which to avoid making redundant expensive queries, such as an Apache/mod_perl application talking to a database. If you wish to share that data between processes, then perhaps the SharedMemoryCache is appropriate, although its behavior is tightly bound to the underlying IPC mechanism, which varies from system to system, and is unsuitable for large objects or large numbers of objects. When the SharedMemoryCache is not acceptable, then FileCache offers all of the same functionality with similar performance metrics, and it is not limited in terms of the number of objects or their size. If you wish to maintain a strict limit on the size of a file system based cache, then the SizeAwareFileCache is the way to go. Similarly, the SizeAwareMemoryCache and the SizeAwareSharedMemoryCache add size management functionality to the MemoryCache and SharedMemoryCache classes respectively. Using a cache is simple. Here is some sample code for instantiating and using a MemoryCache: use Cache::Cache qw( $EXPIRES_NEVER $EXPIRES_NOW ); use Cache::MemoryCache; my $options_hash_ref = { 'default_expires_in' => '10 seconds' }; my $cache = new Cache::MemoryCache( $options_hash_ref ); my $expires_in = '10 minutes'; $cache->set( 'Key', 'Value', $expires_in ); # if the next line is called within 10 minutes, then this # will return the cache value my $value = $cache->get( 'Key' ); Please refer to the perldoc for Cache::Cache and the related implementations for complete documentation. SEE ALSO File::Cache and IPC::Cache, and the project homepage at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/perl-cache/ AUTHOR Original author: DeWitt Clinton Last author: $Author: dclinton $ Copyright (C) 2001 DeWitt Clinton