Guava CacheBuilder removal listener

Question

Please show me where I'm missing something.

I have a cache build by CacheBuilder inside a DataPool. DataPool is a singleton object whose instance various thread can get and act on. Right now I have a single thread which produces data and add this into the said cache.

To show the relevant part of the code:

 private InputDataPool(){

    cache=CacheBuilder.newBuilder().expireAfterWrite(1000, TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS).removalListener(
            new RemovalListener(){
                {
                    logger.debug("Removal Listener created");
                }
                                public void onRemoval(RemovalNotification notification) {
                                    System.out.println("Going to remove data from InputDataPool");
                                    logger.info("Following data is being removed:"+notification.getKey());
                                    if(notification.getCause()==RemovalCause.EXPIRED)
                                    {
                                        logger.fatal("This data expired:"+notification.getKey());
                                    }else
                                    {
                                        logger.fatal("This data didn't expired but evacuated intentionally"+notification.getKey());
                                    }

                                }}
                    ).build(new CacheLoader(){

                        @Override
                        public Object load(Object key) throws Exception {
                                logger.info("Following data being loaded"+(Integer)key);
                                Integer uniqueId=(Integer)key;
                                return InputDataPool.getInstance().getAndRemoveDataFromPool(uniqueId);

                        }

                    });
}

public static InputDataPool getInstance(){
        if(clsInputDataPool==null){
            synchronized(InputDataPool.class){
                if(clsInputDataPool==null)
                {
                    clsInputDataPool=new InputDataPool();
                }
            }
        }
    return clsInputDataPool;
}

From the said thread the call being made is as simple as

 while(true){
 inputDataPool.insertDataIntoPool(inputDataPacket);
     //call some logic which comes with inputDataPacket and sleep for 2 seconds.
}

and where inputDataPool.insertDataIntoPool is like

inputDataPool.insertDataIntoPool(InputDataPacket inputDataPacket){ 
 cache.get(inputDataPacket.getId());
}

Now the question is, the element in cache is supposed to expire after 1000 nanosec.So when inputDataPool.insertDataIntoPool is called second time, the data which has been inserted first time will be evacuated as it must have got expired as the call is being after 2 seconds of its insertion.And then correspondingly Removal Listener should be called. But this is not happening. I looked into cache stats and evictionCount is always zero, no matter how much time cache.get(id) is called.

But importantly, if I extend inputDataPool.insertDataIntoPool

  inputDataPool.insertDataIntoPool(InputDataPacket inputDataPacket){ 
 cache.get(inputDataPacket.getId());
    try{
     Thread.sleep(2000);
   }catch(InterruptedException ex){ex.printStackTrace();
     }
cache.get(inputDataPacket.getId())
}

then the eviction take place as expected with removal listener being called.

Now I'm very much clueless at the moment where I'm missing something to expect such kind of behaviour. Please help me see,if you see something.

P.S. Please ignore any typos.Also no check is being made, no generic has been used, all as this is just in the phase of testing the CacheBuilder functionality.

Thanks

Answer 1

I had the same issue and I could find this at guava's documentation for CacheBuilder.removalListener

Warning: after invoking this method, do not continue to use this cache builder reference; instead use the reference this method returns. At runtime, these point to the same instance, but only the returned reference has the correct generic type information so as to ensure type safety. For best results, use the standard method-chaining idiom illustrated in the class documentation above, configuring a builder and building your cache in a single statement. Failure to heed this advice can result in a ClassCastException being thrown by a cache operation at some undefined point in the future.

So by changing your code to use the builder reference that is called after adding the removalListnener this problem can be resolved

 CacheBuilder builder=CacheBuilder.newBuilder().expireAfterWrite(1000, TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS).removalListener(
            new RemovalListener(){
                {
                    logger.debug("Removal Listener created");
                }
                                public void onRemoval(RemovalNotification notification) {
                                    System.out.println("Going to remove data from InputDataPool");
                                    logger.info("Following data is being removed:"+notification.getKey());
                                    if(notification.getCause()==RemovalCause.EXPIRED)
                                    {
                                        logger.fatal("This data expired:"+notification.getKey());
                                    }else
                                    {
                                        logger.fatal("This data didn't expired but evacuated intentionally"+notification.getKey());
                                    }

                                }}
                    );
   cache=builder.build(new CacheLoader(){

                        @Override
                        public Object load(Object key) throws Exception {
                                logger.info("Following data being loaded"+(Integer)key);
                                Integer uniqueId=(Integer)key;
                                return InputDataPool.getInstance().getAndRemoveDataFromPool(uniqueId);

                        }

                    });

This problem will be resolved. It is kind of wired but I guess it is what it is :)

Answer 2

As explained in the javadoc and in the user guide, There is no thread that makes sure entries are removed from the cache as soon as the delay has elapsed. Instead, entries are removed during write operations, and occasionally during read operations if writes are rare. This is to allow for a high throughput and a low latency. And of course, every write operation doesn't cause a cleanup:

Caches built with CacheBuilder do not perform cleanup and evict values "automatically," or instantly after a value expires, or anything of the sort. Instead, it performs small amounts of maintenance during write operations, or during occasional read operations if writes are rare.

The reason for this is as follows: if we wanted to perform Cache maintenance continuously, we would need to create a thread, and its operations would be competing with user operations for shared locks. Additionally, some environments restrict the creation of threads, which would make CacheBuilder unusable in that environment.