session-storage-cache

sscache

This is a simple library that emulates memcache functions using HTML5 sessionStorage, so that you can cache data on the client and associate an expiration time with each piece of data. If the sessionStorage limit (~5MB) is exceeded, it tries to create space by removing the items that are closest to expiring anyway. If sessionStorage is not available at all in the browser, the library degrades by simply not caching and all cache requests return null.

Methods

The library exposes 5 methods: set(), get(), remove(), flush(), and setBucket().

---

sscache.set

Stores the value in sessionStorage. Expires after specified number of minutes.

Arguments

1. key (string)
2. value (Object|string)
3. time (number: optional)

---

sscache.get

Retrieves specified value from sessionStorage, if not expired.

Arguments

1. key (string)

Returns

string | Object : The stored value. If no value is available, null is returned.

---

sscache.remove

Removes a value from sessionStorage.

Arguments

1. key (string)

---

sscache.flush

Removes all sscache items from sessionStorage without affecting other data.

---

sscache.setBucket

Appends CACHE_PREFIX so sscache will partition data in to different buckets

Arguments

1. bucket (string)

Usage

The interface should be familiar to those of you who have used memcache, and should be easy to understand for those of you who haven't.

For example, you can store a string for 2 minutes using sscache.set():

sscache.set('greeting', 'Hello World!', 2);

You can then retrieve that string with sscache.get():

alert(sscache.get('greeting'));

You can remove that string from the cache entirely with sscache.remove():

sscache.remove('greeting');

You can remove all items from the cache entirely with sscache.flush():

sscache.flush();

You can remove only expired items from the cache entirely with sscache.flushExpired():

sscache.flushExpired();

You can also check if session storage is supported in the current browser with sscache.supported():

if (!sscache.supported()) {
  alert('Session storage is unsupported in this browser');
  return;
}

You can enable console warning if set fails with sscache.enableWarnings():

// enable warnings
sscache.enableWarnings(true);

// disable warnings
sscache.enableWarnings(false);

The library also takes care of serializing objects, so you can store more complex data:

sscache.set('data', {'name': 'Pamela', 'age': 26}, 2);

And then when you retrieve it, you will get it back as an object:

alert(sscache.get('data').name);

If you have multiple instances of sscache running on the same domain, you can partition data in a certain bucket via:

sscache.set('response', '...', 2);
sscache.setBucket('lib');
sscache.set('path', '...', 2);
sscache.flush(); //only removes 'path' which was set in the lib bucket

Real-World Usage

This library was originally developed with the use case of caching results of JSON API queries to speed up my webapps and give them better protection against flaky APIs.

For example, RageTube uses sscache to fetch Youtube API results for 10 minutes:

var key = 'youtube:' + query;
var json = sscache.get(key);
if (json) {
  processJSON(json);
} else {
  fetchJSON(query);
}

function processJSON(json) {
  // ..
}

function fetchJSON() {
  var searchUrl = 'http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos';
  var params = {
   'v': '2', 'alt': 'jsonc', 'q': encodeURIComponent(query)
  }
  JSONP.get(searchUrl, params, null, function(json) {
    processJSON(json);
    sscache.set(key, json, 10);
  });
}

It does not have to be used for only expiration-based caching, however. It can also be used as just a wrapper for sessionStorage, as it provides the benefit of handling JS object (de-)serialization.

For example, the QuizCards Chrome extensions use sscache to store the user statistics for each user bucket, and those stats are an array of objects.

function initBuckets() {
  var bucket1 = [];
  for (var i = 0; i < CARDS_DATA.length; i++) {
    var datum = CARDS_DATA[i];
    bucket1.push({'id': datum.id, 'lastAsked': 0});
  }
  sscache.set(LS_BUCKET + 1, bucket1);
  sscache.set(LS_BUCKET + 2, []);
  sscache.set(LS_BUCKET + 3, []);
  sscache.set(LS_BUCKET + 4, []);
  sscache.set(LS_BUCKET + 5, []);
  sscache.set(LS_INIT, 'true')
}

Browser Support

The sscache library should work in all browsers where sessionStorage is supported. A list of those is here: http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/html5.html

Building

For contributors:

• Run npm install to install all the dependencies.
• Run grunt. The default task will check the files with jshint, minify them, and use browserify to generate a bundle for testing.
• Run grunt test to run the tests.

For repo owners, after a code change:

• Run grunt bump to tag the new release.
• Run npm login, npm publish to release on npm.