CacheModel

To make the management of cached data easier, bettercache provides a structured model for data caching, without the developer constantly building up ad-hoc key strings. This should be a familiar interface, fashioned after Django’s own database models.

class User(CacheModel):
    username = Key()
    email = Field()
    full_name = Field()

user = User(
    username = 'bob',
    email = 'bob@hotmail.com',
    full_name = 'Bob T Fredrick',
)
user.save()

...

user = User.get(username='bob')
user.email == 'bob@hotmail.com'
user.full_name == 'Bob T Fredrick'

CacheModel subclasses are a collection of Key and Field properties to populate with data to be stored in the cache. The creation of keys are automatic, based on the CacheModel class and the values given for all the Key fields for an instance.

The cache objects can save any fields with JSON-serializable values, but this does not include other instances of CacheModel. If you’d like to connect multiple cached entities, you can do so with the field type Reference.

class Workplace(CacheModel):
    name = Key()
    phone = Field()
    address = Field()
    employee_count = Field()

class User(CacheModel):
    username = Key()
    email = Field()
    full_name = Field()

    workplace = Reference(Workplace)

    mother = Reference('self')
    father = Reference('self')

Reference fields are created with a single argument: either a CacheModel class which the field must reference, or 'self' to refernce instances of the same class as itself.

CachedMethod

One useful CacheModel is included with bettercache, named bettercache.decorators.CachedMethod. This class acts as a decorator for methods, and will cache the results of those methods using a defined set of attributes from the instance. For any instance of the class with the same values for this set of attributes, the method will use the cached value properly, but also use its own parameters.

This is a decorator-factory, and it takes one required parameter and one optional.

@CachedMethod('attributes to cache on', expires=SECONDS)
class Home(object):

    def __init__(self, address):
        self.address = address

    @CachedMethod('address')
    def geocode(self):
        return g.geocode(self.address)

CachedFormMethod

An included CachedMethod decorator sublass which knows how to cache methods on Django forms, such that given the same form results, the methods will be cached from previous forms with the same results. This caches based on the cleaned_data rather than pre-validation data, so if your cleaning normalizes the input the caching will be more efficient.

class FriendsLookup(forms.Form):

    username = forms.CharField(required=True)

    @CachedFormMethod(expires=60*15) # expire in 15 minutes
    def get_friends_list(self, include_pending=False):
        username = self.cleaned_data['username']
        friends = Friendship.objects.filter(
            from_user__username=username)
        if include_pending:
            friends = friends.filter(status__in=(PENDING, APPROVED))
        else:
            friends = friends.filter(status=APPROVED)

        return friends

API Reference

CacheModel
A base class you can inherit and define structures to store in the cache, much like a Django Model storing data in the database.
CacheModel.Missing
An exception raised when an object cannot be found in the cache.
CacheModel.save()
Sends the serialized object to the cache for storage.
CacheModel.get(key1=x, key2=y)
Looks for an instance of the cache model to load and return, by the keys given. All keys defined in the model without defaults must be given.
CacheModel.from_miss(**kwargs)

When you define a CacheModel subclass, you can opt to implement the from_miss() method, which will be called on an instance of your class with the keys which couldn’t be found in the database.

Your from_miss() method should initialize the instance, after which the object will be saved to the cache and returned back from the original get() call in the first place.

Key
At least one of your fields must be defined as a Key, which will be combined with the class information to generate a unique key to identify the object in the cache.
Field
In your CacheModel, you should define one or more Field properties. The values of these properties in your instance will all be serialized and sent to the cache when the object is saved.
Reference
If a field needs to contain other CacheModel instances, you may use the special field type Reference, which will fetch the referenced instance from the cache at load time. If any referenced fields in a model are missing, the entire model is considered invalid and a get() will raise a CacheModel.Missing exception.
PickleField
Special field type which uses the python pickle format, rather than JSON, for serialization. This should only be used in special cases, as pickle has a number of drawbacks and corner cases.