Easy, simple to use LRU cache in java

Question

I know it's simple to implement, but I want to reuse something that already exist.

Problem I want to solve is that I load configuration (from XML so I want to cache them) for different pages, roles, ... so the combination of inputs can grow quite much (but in 99% will not). To handle this 1%, I want to have some max number of items in cache...

Till know I have found org.apache.commons.collections.map.LRUMap in apache commons and it looks fine but want to check also something else. Any recommendations?

Answer 1

Here is a very simple and easy to use LRU cache in Java. Although it is short and simple it is production quality. The code is explained (look at the README.md) and has some unit tests.

Answer 2

You can use a LinkedHashMap (Java 1.4+) :

// Create cache
final int MAX_ENTRIES = 100;
Map cache = new LinkedHashMap(MAX_ENTRIES+1, .75F, true) {
    // This method is called just after a new entry has been added
    public boolean removeEldestEntry(Map.Entry eldest) {
        return size() > MAX_ENTRIES;
    }
};

// Add to cache
Object key = "key";
cache.put(key, object);

// Get object
Object o = cache.get(key);
if (o == null && !cache.containsKey(key)) {
    // Object not in cache. If null is not a possible value in the cache,
    // the call to cache.contains(key) is not needed
}

// If the cache is to be used by multiple threads,
// the cache must be wrapped with code to synchronize the methods
cache = (Map)Collections.synchronizedMap(cache);

Answer 3

Here is my implementation which lets me keep an optimal number of elements in memory.

The point is that I do not need to keep track of what objects are currently being used since I'm using a combination of a LinkedHashMap for the MRU objects and a WeakHashMap for the LRU objects. So the cache capacity is no less than MRU size plus whatever the GC lets me keep. Whenever objects fall off the MRU they go to the LRU for as long as the GC will have them.

public class Cache<K,V> {
final Map<K,V> MRUdata;
final Map<K,V> LRUdata;

public Cache(final int capacity)
{
    LRUdata = new WeakHashMap<K, V>();

    MRUdata = new LinkedHashMap<K, V>(capacity+1, 1.0f, true) {
        protected boolean removeEldestEntry(Map.Entry<K,V> entry)
        {
            if (this.size() > capacity) {
                LRUdata.put(entry.getKey(), entry.getValue());
                return true;
            }
            return false;
        };
    };
}

public synchronized V tryGet(K key)
{
    V value = MRUdata.get(key);
    if (value!=null)
        return value;
    value = LRUdata.get(key);
    if (value!=null) {
        LRUdata.remove(key);
        MRUdata.put(key, value);
    }
    return value;
}

public synchronized void set(K key, V value)
{
    LRUdata.remove(key);
    MRUdata.put(key, value);
}
}

Answer 4

This is an old question, but for posterity I wanted to list ConcurrentLinkedHashMap, which is thread safe, unlike LRUMap. Usage is quite easy:

ConcurrentMap<K, V> cache = new ConcurrentLinkedHashMap.Builder<K, V>()
    .maximumWeightedCapacity(1000)
    .build();

And the documentation has some good examples, like how to make the LRU cache size-based instead of number-of-items based.

Answer 5

I also had same problem and I haven't found any good libraries... so I've created my own.

simplelrucache provides threadsafe, very simple, non-distributed LRU caching with TTL support. It provides two implementations

• Concurrent based on ConcurrentLinkedHashMap
• Synchronized based on LinkedHashMap

You can find it here.