1 Redis cache store
2 Install memcached
- 2.1 Install memcached using rubber
- 2.2 Install in plain irb
3 Manual check if it is working
4 Fragment caching
5 Low level caching
6 Test
7 Theory

Guide tells that page and action caching has been extracted to gems and currently we use fragment caching only.

By default caching in rails development environment is disabled. To enable you need to touch tmp/caching-dev.txt AND to restart the server. You can see in config that you can also toggle with rails dev:cache

# config/environments/development.rb
  # Enable/disable caching. By default caching is disabled.
  # Run rails dev:cache to toggle caching.
  if Rails.root.join("tmp/caching-dev.txt").exist?
    config.action_controller.perform_caching = true
    config.action_controller.enable_fragment_cache_logging = true

    config.cache_store = :memory_store
    config.public_file_server.headers = {
      "Cache-Control" => "public, max-age=#{2.days.to_i}"
    }
  else
    config.action_controller.perform_caching = false

    config.cache_store = :null_store
  end

So by default is not enabled in development so in rails console we see

Rails.cache
#    @name="ActiveSupport::Cache::Strategy::LocalCache">

Rails.cache.class
 => ActiveSupport::Cache::NullStore

If we run rails dev:cache than it uses memory (persists untill you exit the console)

Rails.cache
 => #<ActiveSupport::Cache::MemoryStore entries=0, size=0, options={:compress=>false}>

Rails.cache.class
 => ActiveSupport::Cache::MemoryStore

# before it was `ActiveSupport::Cache::FileStore`

On production we should switch to use dalli+memcached or redis (you already have redis when you use background jobs like Sidekiq).

Filestore will create files on tmp/cache/:rand/:rand/cache_key so you can find them ls -R tmp/cache/. If cache_key is array, it is joined with /. On heroku heroku run bash I do not see cache files ls tmp/cache probably because heroku is read only system (only buildpack can add stuff) so it is better to use memcached.

Redis cache store

In Rails 5.2 you can use

# Gemfile
gem 'hiredis'
gem 'redis', require: ['redis', 'redis/connection/hiredis']

# config/application/environments/production.rb
# config/application/environments/development.rb
config.cache_store = :redis_cache_store

In console you can check keys and values

pp Rails.cache.redis.keys

Install memcached

For ubuntu you need to install memcached service. Note that memcached will automatically remove old cache files.

sudo apt-get install memcached
sudo service memcached status

For heroku you need addon memcachier

heroku addons:create memcachier:dev

This will create env variables which you can use in secrets

# sed -i config/secrets.yml -e '/^test:/i
  # caching server
  memcachier_servers: <%= ENV["MEMCACHIER_SERVERS"] %>
  memcachier_username: <%= ENV["MEMCACHIER_USERNAME"] %>
  memcachier_password: <%= ENV["MEMCACHIER_PASSWORD"] %>
'

Use gem dalli in your Gemfile

cat >> Gemfile << HERE_DOC
# https://guides.rubyonrails.org/caching_with_rails.html#activesupport-cache-memcachestore
# cache store is in mem_cache_store which uses dalli
gem 'dalli'
HERE_DOC

cat >> config/initializers/dalli.rb << HERE_DOC
Rails.application.configure do
  # https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/building-a-rails-3-application-with-memcache
  # https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/memcachier
  config.cache_store = :mem_cache_store # this will use local memcached service
  if secrets.memcachier_servers.present?
    config.cache_store = :mem_cache_store,
      secrets.memcachier_servers.split(','),
      {
        username: secrets.memcachier_username,
        password: secrets.memcachier_password,
        failover: true,
        socket_timeout: 1.5,
        socket_failure_delay: 0.2,
        down_retry_delay: 60
      }
  end
end
HERE_DOC

Try with heroku run rails c

Rails.application.config.cache_store

Install memcached using rubber

Read about capistrano and rubber how to set up, so you can add memcached with

# this will copy deploy-memcached.rb and rubber-memcached.yml and role files
bundle exec rubber vulcanize memcached

Add role memcached to Vagrantfile or your hosts. Since vagrant machine do not have image_type which is used to determine max_mem, you need to define it

# config/rubber/rubber-memcached.yml
memcached_max_mem: 2048
memcached_max_mem_hash:
  ...

Also we need to enable listening on all required ports.

To use in rails you need to add

cat >> config/initializers/dalli.rb << HERE_DOC
Rails.application.configure do
  dalli_config = Rails.root.join('config','dalli.rb')
  if File.exists?(dalli_config)
    require dalli_config; include ::Rubber::Dalli::Config
  else
    config.cache_store = :dalli_store # this will use local memcached service
  end
end
HERE_DOC

Install in plain irb

require "rubygems"
require "dalli"
CACHE = Dalli::Client.new("127.0.0.1", { :namespace => 'my_project', :expires_in => 3600, :socket_timeout => 3, :compress => true }) # Options are self-explanatory
CACHE.set("key", "value", 180) # last option is expiry time in seconds
CACHE.get("key")

Manual check if it is working

You can check from bash if memcached service is running

netstat -ap   | grep 11211
# tcp        0      0 localhost:11211         *:*                     LISTEN      17897/memcached
# udp        0      0 localhost:11211         *:*                                 17897/memcached

# if listening on all ip addresses is enabled than you should see
tcp        0      0 *:11211                 *:*                     LISTEN      16065/memcached
udp        0      0 *:11211                 *:*                                 16065/memcached

You should be able to connect

telnet localhost 11211
stats

# another command is
/usr/share/memcached/scripts/memcached-tool localhost:11211 stats

If you use vagrant, than config/rubber/role/memcached/dalli.rb will use rubber_instance.full_name which is default.foo.com but I’m not able to connect using that domain name. So you need to change config/rubber/role/memcached/memcached.conf to add below comment # -l 127.0.0.1 add this option

# we want to listen on all IP addresses
-l 0.0.0.0

You can check in console if properly enabled

Rails.cache.class

And if check its stats

Rails.cache.stats
# {"127.0.0.1:11211"=>{"pid"=>"14592", "uptime"=>"8319", ...

# if service is not working you can expect something like
[DEBUG] Dalli::Server#connect mylocationsubdomain.my-domain.vagrant:11211
[WARNING] mylocationsubdomain.my-domain.vagrant:11211 failed (count: 0) Errno::ECONNREFUSED: Connection refused - connect(2) for "mylocationsubdomain.my-domain.vagrant" port 11211

We can ask ActiveSupport for that also

ActiveSupport::Cache.lookup_store(:mem_cache_store).stats

If cache is using filestore exception will be raised

Rails.cache.stats
NoMethodError: undefined method `stats' for #<ActiveSupport::Cache::FileStore:0x000000058a45d0>

You can see more info about stats

Fragment caching

Main usage is like this

<% cache item do %>
  bla
<% end %>

Key will contain template path, item id, item updated_at and template digest so if you change anything, cache will be expired.

For index pages I use key to be string, that is maximum updated at (also template digest will invalidate cache).

<% cache ['todos', @tasks.maximum(:updated_at)] do %>
  My todos list
<% end %>

Note that if you use translations on different subdomain than put default locale in the key also.

<% cache ['moves-markers', I18n.locale, latest_move_timestamp] do %>

Note that you should not use same keys on multiple places on the page. So if you have to use on same page, use different first string.

Note that cache key should include all items that happens to be inside if statement, for example we show different content for different users. Also if we should numbers that depends on current day, for example Todays registered: <%= User.where('created_at > ?', Time.zone.at_begging_of_day) we should include Date in cache keys since it should be updated (event we do not touch any user)

<% cache ['tickets', can?(:view, company), company.tickets.maxium(:updated_at)] do %>
  <% if can? :view, company %>
    Hi admin, here is the secret link
  <% else %>
    <%= company.tickets.all.size %>
  <% end %>
<% end %>

You can clear cache in rails console : Rails.cache.clear, also rake tmp:cache:clear for rails clear cache

You can use conditional caching you can use cache_if

<% cache_if params[:cache], product do %>
  <%= render product %>
<% end %>

If you show some data from nested resources, for example product comment, you need to add relation so any update will also trigger parent update, and invalidate parent cache.

# app/models/comment.rb
  belongs_to :product, touch: true

Inside json jbuilder you need to call json.cache!

# app/views/users/index.json.jbuilder
json.cache! ['users', @users.maxium(:updated_at)] do
  ...
end

Low level caching

In console or in code you can cache put, get

Rails.cache.write 'my_key', 123
Rails.cache.read 'my_key'
Rails.cache.fetch 'my_key' do
  123
end

fetch will read from cache if exists or write to cache For any ActiveRecord instance, you have method cache_key which you can use for example in fetch block.

class Product < ApplicationRecord
  def competing_price
    Rails.cache.fetch("#{cache_key}/competing_price", expires_in: 12.hours) do
      Competitor::API.find_price(id)
    end
  end
end

cache key uses id and updated_at

Task.new.cache_key
# => "tasks/new"
Task.last.cache_key
# => "tasks/2-20170511114115000000"

Note that sql caching is only inside one action. Usually rails do not perform sql query untill it is needed. If you only read current_user in before actions, that query will be cached. But if you update current_user, than following current_user is not reading from cache (for example if you use current_user in view or in other before actions).

You can use this snippets

Test

Enable caching in test with

# config/environments/test.rb
  if Rails.root.join("tmp/caching-test.txt").exist?
    config.action_controller.perform_caching = true
    config.action_controller.enable_fragment_cache_logging = true

    config.cache_store = :memory_store
    config.public_file_server.headers = {
      "Cache-Control" => "public, max-age=#{2.days.to_i}"
    }
  else
    config.action_controller.perform_caching = false

    config.cache_store = :null_store
  end

you can use helpers

# test/a/rails_cache_helper.rb
# Add `include RailsCacheHelper` to test/test_helper.rb
#
# Credits https://kevinjalbert.com/testing-the-use-of-rails-caching/
module RailsCacheHelper
  # Enable cache with config/environments/test.rb and
  #   touch tmp/caching-test.txt
  def with_clean_caching
    Rails.cache.clear
    yield
  ensure
    Rails.cache.clear
  end

  def cache_has_value?(value)
    cache_data.values.map(&:value).any?(value)
  end

  def key_for_cached_value(value)
    cache_data.each_value do |key, entry|
      return key if entry&.value == value
    end
  end

  private

  def cache_data
    Rails.cache.instance_variable_get(:@data)
  end
end

and test for example

Theory

mnot cache_docs

Rails cache

Contents