I am adding a bunch of items to the ASP.NET cache with a specific prefix.
I'd like to be able to iterate over the cache and remove those items.
The way I've tried to do it is like so:
foreach (DictionaryEntry CachedItem in Cache)
{
string CacheKey = CachedItem.Key.ToString();
if(CacheKey.StartsWith(CACHE_PREFIX){
Cache.Remove(CacheKey);
}
}
Could I be doing this more efficiently?
I had considered creating a temp file and adding the items with a dependancy on the file, then just deleting the file. Is that over kill?
You can't remove items from a collection whilst you are iterating over it so you need to do something like this:
List<string> itemsToRemove = new List<string>();
IDictionaryEnumerator enumerator = Cache.GetEnumerator();
while (enumerator.MoveNext())
{
if (enumerator.Key.ToString().ToLower().StartsWith(prefix))
{
itemsToRemove.Add(enumerator.Key.ToString());
}
}
foreach (string itemToRemove in itemsToRemove)
{
Cache.Remove(itemToRemove);
}
This approach is fine and is quicker and easier than cache dependencies.
You could write a subclass of CacheDependency
that does the invalidation appropriately.
You should keep another item in cache for this purpose only. Let's say you cache 10.000 items with keys like: cache_prefix_XXX. So adding an item with just cache_prefix as its key and adding the rest of them with a dependency on this key you can control the removal of all of them. One thing to consider would be the priorities. Set that particular item a higher priority than the actual data items.
It really depends on number of your cache items and how often you do the cleanup. I would worry about it only if it actually was a performance issue - i.e. measure it.
Your solution is fine to me unless you're doing something extreme.
For the cache clean up , I assume you need to run it manually when you notice there are too many cache items.
Using MS lib cache block , it can do this work for you automatically.
In the cachingConfiguration; you can set the property maximumElementsInCacheBeforeScavenging; once the number of cache items are over the limit then cache manager will clean out the cache automatically.