In-Memory Cache with O(1) Operations and LRU Purging Strategy

Cache-LRU is a very small JavaScript library, providing an in-memory key-indexed object cache data structure with Least-Recently-Used (LRU) object purging strategy and main operations which all have strict O(1), i.e., constant and hence independent of the number of cached objects, time complexity (including the internal LRU purging functionality).

$ npm install cache-lru

• new CacheLRU(): CacheLRU: [O(1)]
  Create a new cache instance -- with initially no cached objects and an infinite caching limit.

• CacheLRU#limit(max?: Number): Number: [O(1)]
  Set a new or get current maximum number of objects in the cache. On setting a new maximum, if previously already more than max objects are in the cache, the length() - max LRU ojects are automatically deleted.

• CacheLRU#length(): Number: [O(1)]
  Get number of objects in the cache.

• CacheLRU#dispose(callback: (key, val, op) => Void): CacheLRU: [O(1)]
  Set a callback which is called once for every object just before it is disposed off the cache, either because it is replaced by a set() call or deleted by a del() call. The parameters to the callback are the key under which the object was stored, the value of the object which was stored and the operation (either set or del) which caused the object disposal. This is usually used for explicit resource deallocation reasons.

• CacheLRU#has(key: String): Boolean: [O(1)]
  Check whether object exists under key -- without promoting the corresponding object to be the new MRU object.

• CacheLRU#peek(key: String): Object: [O(1)]
  Get value of object under key -- without promoting the corresponding object to be the new MRU object. If no object exists under key the value undefined is returned.

• CacheLRU#touch(key: String): CacheLRU: [O(1)]
  Touch object under key and this way explicitly promote the object to be the new MRU object. If no object exists under key an exception is thrown.

• CacheLRU#get(key: String): Object: [O(1)]
  Get value of object under key -- and promote the object to be the new MRU object. If no object exists under key the value undefined is returned.

• CacheLRU#set(key: String, val: Object, expires?: Number): CacheLRU: [O(1)]
  Set value of object under key. If there is already an object stored under key, replace it. Else insert as a new object into the cache. In both cases, promote the affected object to be the new MRU object. If the optional expires parameter is given, it should be the duration in milliseconds the object should maximally last in the cache (it still can be disposed earlier because of LRU purging of the cache). By default this is Infinity.

• CacheLRU#del(key: String): CacheLRU: [O(1)]
  Delete object under key. If no object exists under key an exception is thrown.

• CacheLRU#clear(): CacheLRU: [O(n)]
  Delete all objects in the cache.

• CacheLRU#keys(): String[]: [O(n)]
  Get the list of keys of all objects in the cache, in MRU to LRU order.

• CacheLRU#values(): Object[]: [O(n)]
  Get the list of values of all objects in the cache, in MRU to LRU order.

• CacheLRU#each(callback: (val: Object, key: String, order: Number) =>, ctx: Object): Object: [O(n)]
  Iterate over all objects in the cache, in MRU to LRU order, and call the callback function for each object. The function receives the object value, the object key and the iteration order (starting from zero and steadily increasing).

Although Cache-LRU is written in ECMAScript 6, it is transpiled to ECMAScript 5 and this way runs in really all(!) current (as of 2016) JavaScript environments, of course.

Internally, Cache-LRU is based on a managing all objects in a two-headed double-linked list of buckets. This way it can achieve the O(1) time complexity in all its main operations, including the automatically happening LRU purging functionality.

Copyright (c) 2015-2024 Dr. Ralf S. Engelschall (http://engelschall.com/)

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