Python LRU Cache Decorator Per Instance

caching, decorator, lru, python

Solution

Assuming you don't want to modify the code (e.g., because you want to be able to just port to 3.3 and use the stdlib `functools.lru_cache`, or use `functools32` out of PyPI instead of copying and pasting a recipe into your code), there's one obvious solution: Create a new decorated instance method with each instance.

class Test:
    def cached_method(self, x):
         return x + 5
    def __init__(self):
         self.cached_method = lru_cache(maxsize=16)(self.cached_method)

Problem

Using the LRU Cache decorator found here: http://code.activestate.com/recipes/578078-py26-and-py30-backport-of-python-33s-lru-cache/ ``` from lru_cache import lru_cache class Test: @lru_cache(maxsize=16) def cached_method(self, x): return x + 5 ``` I can create a decorated class method with this but it ends up creating a global cache that applies to all instances of class Test. However, my intent was to create a per instance cache. So if I were to instantiate 3 Tests, I would have 3 LRU caches rather than 1 LRU cache that for all 3 instances. The only indication I have that this is happening is when calling the cache_info() on the different class instances decorated methods, they all return the same cache statistics (which is extremely unlikely to occur given they are being interacted with very different arguments): ``` CacheInfo(hits=8379, misses=759, maxsize=128, currsize=128) CacheInfo(hits=8379, misses=759, maxsize=128, currsize=128) CacheInfo(hits=8379, misses=759, maxsize=128, currsize=128) ``` Is there a decorator or trick that would allow me to easily cause this decorator to create a cache for each class instance?

Original source