Spring @CacheEvict using wildcards

caching, java, spring

Solution

As with 99% of every question in the universe, the answer is: it depends. If your cache manager implements something that deals with that, great. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

If you're using `SimpleCacheManager`, which is a basic in-memory cache manager provided by Spring, you're probably using `ConcurrentMapCache` that also comes with Spring. Although it's not possible to extend `ConcurrentMapCache` to deal with wildcards in keys (because the cache store is private and you can't access it), you could just use it as an inspiration for your own implementation.

Below there's a possible implementation (I didn't really test it much other than to check if it's working). This is a plain copy of `ConcurrentMapCache` with a modification on the `evict()` method. The difference is that this version of `evict()` treats the key to see if it's a regex. In that case, it iterates through all the keys in the store and evict the ones that match the regex.

package com.sigraweb.cache;

import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap;
import java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentMap;

import org.springframework.cache.Cache;
import org.springframework.cache.support.SimpleValueWrapper;
import org.springframework.util.Assert;

public class RegexKeyCache implements Cache {
    private static final Object NULL_HOLDER = new NullHolder();

    private final String name;

    private final ConcurrentMap<Object, Object> store;

    private final boolean allowNullValues;

    public RegexKeyCache(String name) {
        this(name, new ConcurrentHashMap<Object, Object>(256), true);
    }

    public RegexKeyCache(String name, boolean allowNullValues) {
        this(name, new ConcurrentHashMap<Object, Object>(256), allowNullValues);
    }

    public RegexKeyCache(String name, ConcurrentMap<Object, Object> store, boolean allowNullValues) {
        Assert.notNull(name, "Name must not be null");
        Assert.notNull(store, "Store must not be null");
        this.name = name;
        this.store = store;
        this.allowNullValues = allowNullValues;
    }

    @Override
    public final String getName() {
        return this.name;
    }

    @Override
    public final ConcurrentMap<Object, Object> getNativeCache() {
        return this.store;
    }

    public final boolean isAllowNullValues() {
        return this.allowNullValues;
    }

    @Override
    public ValueWrapper get(Object key) {
        Object value = this.store.get(key);
        return toWrapper(value);
    }

    @Override
    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    public <T> T get(Object key, Class<T> type) {
        Object value = fromStoreValue(this.store.get(key));
        if (value != null && type != null && !type.isInstance(value)) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("Cached value is not of required type [" + type.getName() + "]: " + value);
        }
        return (T) value;
    }

    @Override
    public void put(Object key, Object value) {
        this.store.put(key, toStoreValue(value));
    }

    @Override
    public ValueWrapper putIfAbsent(Object key, Object value) {
        Object existing = this.store.putIfAbsent(key, value);
        return toWrapper(existing);
    }

    @Override
    public void evict(Object key) {
        this.store.remove(key);
        if (key.toString().startsWith("regex:")) {
            String r = key.toString().replace("regex:", "");
            for (Object k : this.store.keySet()) {
                if (k.toString().matches(r)) {
                    this.store.remove(k);
                }
            }
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void clear() {
        this.store.clear();
    }

    protected Object fromStoreValue(Object storeValue) {
        if (this.allowNullValues && storeValue == NULL_HOLDER) {
            return null;
        }
        return storeValue;
    }

    protected Object toStoreValue(Object userValue) {
        if (this.allowNullValues && userValue == null) {
            return NULL_HOLDER;
        }
        return userValue;
    }

    private ValueWrapper toWrapper(Object value) {
        return (value != null ? new SimpleValueWrapper(fromStoreValue(value)) : null);
    }

    @SuppressWarnings("serial")
    private static class NullHolder implements Serializable {
    }
}

I trust that readers know how to initialize the cache manager with a custom cache implementation. There's lots of documentation out there that shows you how to do that. After your project is properly configured, you can use the annotation normally like so:

@CacheEvict(value = { "cacheName" }, key = "'regex:#tenant'+'.*'")
public myMethod(String tenant){
...
}

Again, this is far from being properly tested, but it gives you a way to do what you want. If you're using another cache manager, you could extends its cache implementation similarly.

Problem

Original source