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Caching REST API results for optimization
When data fetched from Visual UGC via API is required for every page view, it can be expensive to make a request for every impression. Often the data does not need to be the latest data, especially if it's known that the data does not change often. In this guide we will explore methods to reduce API consumption (reducing risk of exceeding the API rate limit), while utilising the data at the same time.
By using the cache method, we will end up having a faster web response and REST API's rate limits will not limit us to serve our busy web page to clients.
In this guide we will use memcached in a demo PHP application to implement a caching strategy for Filter data.
There are several caches methods that we can use and your mileage will certainly vary.
Most languages and frameworks have similar patterns for caching locally (e.g. local file or RAM such as PHP-APC or node-cache), as well as drivers for distributed caching systems such as memcached. Further to this, edge server caching applications such as Varnish can cache the result before it even hits your web server, or web server extensions can add the capability to Apache or nginx.
In each of these, the pattern is similar: rather than hitting the Visual UGC API every time data is required from a resource, store the response for a period of time in a cache and use the cached version until that period of time expired for all requests.
In the case of local cache, the data is stored on each web server. While good for single-server implementations, once you exceed one application server and since each server will have its own cache, you run the risk of using different versions in different requests.
Distributed cache systems such as memcached resolve the above problem and allow a single cache to be accessed from multiple sources. For example, each one of your 5 application servers can have their application access the identical source for the cached data.
If you wish to step to a higher level, you can store the web server response itself in a cache and serve that to visitors via your web server or reverse proxy of some kind.
Memcached is a general-purpose distributed memory caching system.
Filters API provides an endpoint to obtain the filters that are available in the Stack.
In this applicaiton we will utilise memcached to cache the response of the Visual UGC API in raw format and generate an output of it.
In this guide we will do the following:
- Install and configure memcached
- Generate uncached requests
- Generate cached requests
In this guide we won't be going through installing it as it comes in many variants, however if you're not familiar there is great info on the memcached Wiki and PHP Manual.
<?php
// Fetch filters from Visual UGC REST API
$filters = getFiltersFromStackla();
echo '<select name="filters">';
foreach ($filters as $id => $name) {
echo "<option value=\"{$id}\">{$name}</option>";
}
echo '</select>';
// The End
Execute the above code a number of times, and you will notice that every request generates hits on the Visual UGC API, and the API console will indicate that there are now less requests available.
Before we do anything, we are assuming that there is a function named
getFiltersFromStackla that retrieves the raw JSON from the Stack and processes into an associative array (id=>name). Details on how to acquire the Filters are covered in this guide, although the effort to wrap the task in the getFiltersFromStackla is left as a separate exercise.The following code is a sample of how to connect to the memcached server.
$mc = new Memcache();
// Modify this for your server
$mcHost = 'localhost';
$mcPort = 11211;
$mcPresist = true;
$mcWeight = 1;
$mcTimeout = 1;
// Add a memcached server to connection pool
$mc->addServer($mcHost, $mcPort, $mcPresist, $mcWeight, $mcTimeout);
// Connect to memcached server
$mc->connect($mcHost, $mcPort);
Now that we have a connection, we can query for particular data, and if not found, store the data itself. memcached is a key-value store, so we will need a unique key to store the data under.
if ($mc->get('filters')) {
// Get cached value
$filters = $mc->get('filters');
} else {
// Fetch filters from Visual UGC REST API
$filters = getFiltersFromStackla();
// Cache filters for the next 30 seconds
$mc->set('filters', $filters, time() + 30);
}
<?php
$mHost = 'localhost';
$mPort = 11211;
$mPresist = TRUE;
$mWeight = 1;
$mTimeout = 1;
$m = new Memcache();
// Add a memcached server to connection pool
$m->addServer ( $mHost, $mPort, $mPresist, $mWeight, $mTimeout);
// Connect to memcached server
$m->connect($mHost, $mPort);
// Check if filters result is in memcached
if ($m->get('filters')) {
// Get cached value
$filters = $m->get('filters');
} else {
// Fetch filters from Visual UGC REST API
$filters = getFiltersFromStackla();
// Cache filters for 30 seconds minute
$m->set('filters', $filters, time() + 30);
}
echo '<select name="filters">';
foreach ($filters as $id => $name) {
echo "<option value=\"{$id}\">{$name}</option>";
}
echo '</select>';
// The End
After executing this code, you will notice that the first request reduces the allowed requests in the console, however for the following 30 seconds, subsequent hits do not. This is the effect of the cache.
This example can be further expanded with the following activities:
- Caching other Visual UGC endpoints
- Caching Filter content after dynamically changing Filter settings (personalised content)