Caching Data

Caching Data

Inject ICleverCache into your service and use GetOrCreate or GetOrCreateAsync — same pattern as IMemoryCache, with an extra type parameter that tells CleverCache which entity type owns this cache entry.

Basic usage

public class OrderService(ICleverCache cache, AppDbContext db)
{
    public async Task<List<Order>> GetAllAsync()
        => await cache.GetOrCreateAsync<Order, List<Order>>(
               "orders-all",
               async () => await db.Orders.ToListAsync()
           ) ?? [];
}

When any Order is saved (created, updated, or deleted) via EF Core, the "orders-all" entry is automatically evicted. The same applies if a type that Order is registered as a dependent of is saved — for example, if Customer is configured to cascade to Order, saving a Customer will also evict "orders-all".

Warning

⚠️ WARNING: If you pass a complex object as the cache key, CleverCache will try to canonicalize it structurally. That is usually fine for simple request objects, but types with expressions, deferred iterators, or other unusual members can produce noisy keys. For those cases, use a type-specific cache key provider (see Cache Key Providers). If CleverCache still cannot produce a stable key, it will log a warning and skip caching for that call.

Multiple types

If a cache entry contains data from more than one entity type, pass all relevant types — the entry will be evicted when any of them changes:

var summary = await cache.GetOrCreateAsync<List<OrderSummary>>(
    new[] { typeof(Order), typeof(Customer) },
    "order-summary",
    async () => await BuildSummaryAsync()
);

Entry options

All overloads accept an optional CleverCacheEntryOptions. If you do not pass one, CleverCache uses a 4 hour sliding expiration by default:

var options = new CleverCacheEntryOptions
{
    // Expire 10 minutes after creation
    AbsoluteExpirationRelativeToNow = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(10),

    // Or expire at a fixed point in time
    AbsoluteExpiration = DateTimeOffset.UtcNow.AddHours(1),

    // Extend lifetime on each read (memory cache only)
    SlidingExpiration = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(5),
};

var result = await cache.GetOrCreateAsync<Order, List<Order>>(
    "orders-all",
    async () => await db.Orders.ToListAsync(),
    options
);

The default can be changed globally by setting CleverCacheOptions.DefaultEntryOptions during AddCleverCache(...).

Manual removal

Remove a specific key:

cache.Remove("orders-all");

Remove all entries for a type (also cascades to dependent types — see Dependent Caches):

cache.RemoveByType<Order>();
// or
cache.RemoveByType(typeof(Order));