Release Notes

In this section you will find the release notes for each version we release under this major version. If you are looking for the release notes of previous major versions use the version switcher at the top left of this documentation book. Here is a breakdown of our major version releases.

• Version 6.0 - August 2020

• Version 5.0 - July 2018

• Version 4.0 - January 2015

• Version 3.0 - March 2011

• Version 2.0 - April 2007

• Version 1.0 - June 2006

Release Notes

Release Notes

Bug

• Fixed method return value + SQL compatibility on jdbc metadata indexer thanks to @homestar9

• reap operation was not ignoring 0 values for last access timeouts

• Typo in queryExecute Attribute "datasource" in the JDBCStore.cfc

Improvement

• Replace IIF and urlEncodedFormat on cache content reports

• Lower logging verbosity of cache reaping from info to debug messages

CacheBox 6 is a major release following suite of the ColdBox Platform umbrella. Below you can find a link to the ColdBox what's new and the CacheBox release notes for this major release.

Release Notes

ColdBox 6.3.0 is a minor release that squashes lots of bugs and does tons of improvements for performance!

This release was a ColdBox minor bump with no tickets affecting CacheBox

CacheBox 6.1.0 is a minor release with only resolved tickets for the underlying LogBox library.

Release Notes

• Cache Aggregator

  • Ability to aggregate different caching engines

  • Ability to aggregate different configurations of the same caches

  • Rich aggregation event model

  • Granular logging

• Fast and Simple to use

  • Fast ColdFusion and Java hybrid cache

  • Simple API and configuration parameters

  • Small Footprint

  • No need to create it, configure it or manage it if used within a ColdBox Application

• Solid Core

  • Multi-Threaded

  • Based on Java Concurrency Classes

  • Multiple Eviction Policies: LRU,LFU and FIFO

  • Memory Management & Memory Sensitive caching based on Java Soft References

  • High Load Tested

  • Fully Documented

• Extensible & Flexible

  • Cache Listeners for event broadcasting

  • Create your own custom eviction policies

  • Create your own cache providers

  • Create your own CacheBox object storages

  • Extensive and granular purging mechanisms (regular expressions and key snippets)

• Highly Configurable

  • JVM Threshold Checks

  • Object Limits

  • Ability to time expire objects

  • Eternal (singletons) and time-lived objects

  • Object purging based on object usage (Access Timeouts)

  • Fully configurable at runtime via dynamic configurations and hot-updates

• Visually Appealing and Useful

  • Fully featured caching monitor and commands panel

  • Complete cache performance reports

Our CacheBox RefCard will get you up and running in now time.

Download Here

CacheBox 6.2.0 is a minor released under the main ColdBox 6.x umbrella. Significant updates and release notes are below. Please also note that LogBox is included with CacheBox, so all updates to the LogBox library are also updates of CacheBox 6.2.0.

Release Notes

The source code for this book is hosted in GitHub: https://github.com/ortus-docs/cachebox-docs. You can freely contribute to it and submit pull requests. The contents of this book is copyright by Ortus Solutions, Corp and cannot be altered or reproduced without author's consent. All content is provided "As-Is" and can be freely distributed.

• The majority of code examples in this book are done in cfscript.

• The majority of code generation and running of examples are done via CommandBox: The ColdFusion (CFML) CLI, Package Manager, REPL - http://www.ortussolutions.com/products/commandbox

• All ColdFusion examples designed to run on the open source Lucee Platform or Adobe ColdFusion 11+

External Trademarks & Copyrights

Flash, Flex, ColdFusion, and Adobe are registered trademarks and copyrights of Adobe Systems, Inc.

Notice of Liability

The information in this book is distributed “as is”, without warranty. The author and Ortus Solutions, Corp shall not have any liability to any person or entity with respect to loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the content of this training book, software and resources described in it.

Contributing

We highly encourage contribution to this book and our open source software. The source code for this book can be found in our GitHub repository where you can submit pull requests.

Charitable Proceeds

10% of the proceeds of this book will go to charity to support orphaned kids in El Salvador - https://www.harvesting.org/. So please donate and purchase the printed version of this book, every book sold can help a child for almost 2 months.

Shalom Children's Home

Shalom Children’s Home (http://www.harvesting.org/) is one of the ministries that is dear to our hearts located in El Salvador. During the 12 year civil war that ended in 1990, many children were left orphaned or abandoned by parents who fled El Salvador. The Benners saw the need to help these children and received 13 children in 1982. Little by little, more children came on their own, churches and the government brought children to them for care, and the Shalom Children’s Home was founded.

Shalom now cares for over 80 children in El Salvador, from newborns to 18 years old. They receive shelter, clothing, food, medical care, education and life skills training in a Christian environment. The home is supported by a child sponsorship program.

We have personally supported Shalom for over 6 years now; it is a place of blessing for many children in El Salvador that either have no families or have been abandoned. This is good earth to seed and plant.

Luis Fernando Majano Lainez

Luis Majano is a Computer Engineer with over 15 years of software development and systems architecture experience. He was born in San Salvador, El Salvador in the late 70’s, during a period of economical instability and civil war. He lived in El Salvador until 1995 and then moved to Miami, Florida where he completed his Bachelors of Science in Computer Engineering at Florida International University. Luis resides in The Woodlands, Texas with his beautiful wife Veronica, baby girl Alexia and baby boy Lucas!

He is the CEO of Ortus Solutions, a consulting firm specializing in web development, ColdFusion (CFML), Java development and all open source professional services under the ColdBox and ContentBox stack. He is the creator of ColdBox, ContentBox, WireBox, MockBox, LogBox and anything “BOX”, and contributes to many open source ColdFusion projects. He is also the Adobe ColdFusion user group manager for the Inland Empire. You can read his blog at www.luismajano.com

Luis has a passion for Jesus, tennis, golf, volleyball and anything electronic. Random Author Facts:

• He played volleyball in the Salvadorean National Team at the tender age of 17

• The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is something he reads every 5 years. (Geek!)

• His first ever computer was a Texas Instrument TI-86 that his parents gave him in 1986. After some time digesting his very first BASIC book, he had written his own tic-tac-toe game at the age of 9. (Extra geek!)

• He has a geek love for circuits, microcontrollers and overall embedded systems.

• He has of late (during old age) become a fan of running and bike riding with his family.

Keep Jesus number one in your life and in your heart. I did and it changed my life from desolation, defeat and failure to an abundant life full of love, thankfulness, joy and overwhelming peace. As this world breathes failure and fear upon any life, Jesus brings power, love and a sound mind to everybody!

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” – Proverbs 3:5

Contributors

Jorge Emilio Reyes Bendeck

Jorge is an Industrial and Systems Engineer born in El Salvador. After finishing his Bachelor studies at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education ITESM, Mexico, he went back to his home country where he worked as the COO of Industrias Bendek S.A.. In 2012 he left El Salvador and moved to Switzerland in pursuit of the love of his life. He married her and today he resides in Basel with his lovely wife Marta and their daughter Sofía.

Jorge started working as project manager and business developer at Ortus Solutions, Corp. in 2013, . At Ortus he fell in love with software development and now enjoys taking part on software development projects and software documentation! He is a fellow Christian who loves to play the guitar, worship and rejoice in the Lord!

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 2 Corinthians 5:17

Brad Wood

Brad grew up in southern Missouri where he systematically disassembled every toy he ever owned which occasionally led to unintentional shock therapy (TVs hold charge long after they've been unplugged, you know) After high school he majored in Computer Science with a music minor at MidAmerica Nazarene University (Olathe, KS). Today he lives in Kansas City with his wife and three girls where he still disassembles most of his belongings (including automobiles) just with a slightly higher success rate of putting them back together again.) Brad enjoys church, all sorts of international food, and the great outdoors.

Brad has been programming CFML for 12+ years and has used every version of CF since 4.5. He first fell in love with ColdFusion as a way to easily connect a database to his website for dynamic pages. Brad blogs at (http://www.codersrevolution.com) and likes to work on solder-at-home digital and analog circuits with his daughter as well as building projects with Arduino-based microcontrollers.

Brad's CommandBox Snake high score is 141.

   _____           _          ____            
  / ____|         | |        |  _ \           
 | |     __ _  ___| |__   ___| |_) | _____  __
 | |    / _` |/ __| '_ \ / _ \  _ < / _ \ \/ /
 | |___| (_| | (__| | | |  __/ |_) | (_) >  < 
  \_____\__,_|\___|_| |_|\___|____/ \___/_/\_\

CacheBox Manual - Version 6.x

CacheBox is a cache aggregator, in which you can aggregate different caching engines or types of the same engine into one single umbrella. It gives you built in logging (via LogBox), an event model, synchronization, shutdown/startup procedures, reporting, interaction consoles and best of all a cache agnostic API.

CacheBox is a standalone framework for ColdFusion (CFML) applications and it is also bundled with the ColdBox Platform.

Versioning

CacheBox is maintained under the Semantic Versioning guidelines as much as possible. Releases will be numbered with the following format:

<major>.<minor>.<patch>

And constructed with the following guidelines:

• Breaking backward compatibility bumps the major (and resets the minor and patch)

• New additions without breaking backward compatibility bumps the minor (and resets the patch)

• Bug fixes and misc changes bumps the patch

License

The ColdBox Platform, CacheBox is open source and licensed under the Apache 2 License.

• Copyright by Ortus Solutions, Corp

• ColdBox, CacheBox, Wirebox, LogBox are registered trademarks by Ortus Solutions, Corp

Discussion & Help

The Box products help and discussion groups can be found here: https://community.ortussolutions.com/

Reporting a Bug

We all make mistakes from time to time :) So why not let us know about it and help us out. We also love pull requests, so please star us and fork us: https://github.com/coldbox/coldbox-platform

Jira Issue Tracking

• https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/COLDBOX

• https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/WIREBOX

• https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/LOGBOX

• https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/CACHEBOX

Professional Open Source

ColdBox is a professional open source software backed by Ortus Solutions, Corp offering services like:

• Custom Development

• Professional Support & Mentoring

• Training

• Server Tuning

• Security Hardening

• Code Reviews

• Much More

Resources

• Official Site: http://www.coldbox.org

• CFCasts Video Training: https://www.cfcasts.com

• Source Code: https://github.com/coldbox/coldbox-platform

• Bug Tracker: https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/CACHEBOX

• Twitter: @coldbox

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coldboxplatform

• Vimeo Channel: http://vimeo.com/channels/coldbox

HONOR GOES TO GOD ABOVE ALL

Because of His grace, this project exists. If you don't like this, then don't read it, its not for you.

"Therefore being justified by **faith**, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by **faith** into this **grace** wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." Romans 5:5

CacheBox is the core framework you need to instantiate in order to work with caching in your application. You can instantiate it with a CacheBoxConfig object that will hold all of your caching configurations. To configure the library you can either do it programmatically or via a struct/data DSL, the choice is yours. After the library is instantiated and configured you can ask from it a named cache provider, or interact with the caches. By default, CacheBox can be started with no configuration and it will configure itself with the default configuration that is shipped with CacheBox that can be found in the following location:

The default configuration is the following:

Modes of Operation

In summary, CacheBox has two modes of operation:

• Standalone Framework

• ColdBox Application

If you have downloaded CacheBox as a standalone framework, then please make sure you use the correct namespace path (cachebox.system). Also, once you create CacheBox make sure that you persist it somewhere, either in Application scope or any other scope or a dependency injection context (WireBox). ColdBox application users already have an instance of CacheBox created for you in every application and it is stored in the main application controller and can be retrieved via the following function:

Info Note: Most of the examples shown in this documentation refer the default framework namespace of coldbox.system. However, if you are using CacheBox as a standalone framework, then the namespace to use is cachebox.system. Happy Coding!

Creating CacheBox Examples

Let's start with the simplest example of them all which is just creating CacheBox with the default configuration. The rest of the samples show different configuration options:

Here are some more configuration samples:

If you are using CacheBox within a ColdBox application, ColdBox is in charge of emitting reaping or cleanup requests to the CacheBox factory. However, if you are using the standalone version of the cache, then you will need to emit this command yourself in the desired execution point. We would suggest to do this on every request. This does not mean that the request executes every time, it means that the trigger is made and if the reaping time has been elapsed, then the caches clean themselves (CacheBox Providers Only!):

That's it! Just call on the reapAll() method and this will make sure that your caches clean themselves according to the reaping frequency selected in your configuration file.

Info: Reaping frequency and cleanup only applies to the CacheBox Provider.

CacheBox has been designed to work either as a standalone framework or within the ColdBox Platform. So if you are building ColdBox applications, you do not have to do anything; CacheBox is already part of the platform. The main difference between both versions is the instantiation and usage namespace, the rest is the same.

The best way to install CacheBox is using CommandBox CLI and package manager.

• Download CacheBox Standalone

System Requirements

CacheBox has been designed to work under the following CFML Engines:

• Adobe ColdFusion 2016+

• Lucee 4.5+

Manual Installation

If you are using CacheBox within a ColdBox application context, then CacheBox is part of the platform. Just install ColdBox normally. If you are using CacheBox standalone, just drop CacheBox in your application root or create a mapping called cachebox that points to the installation folder. If you can run the following snippet, then CacheBox is installed correctly:

cachebox = new cachebox.system.cache.CacheFactory();

Note Please remember that if you use the standalone version the namespace is cachebox.system.cache and if you use the ColdBox application version it is coldbox.system.cache. From this point on, we will use the standalone namespace for simplicity.

CommandBox Installation

You can leverage CommandBox to install the standalone version of CacheBox

# Latest CacheBox
box install cachebox

# Bleeding Edge
box install cachebox@be

Namespaces

Standalone

cachebox.system.cache

ColdBox

coldbox.system.cache

Note All examples in this book are based on the standalone namespace.

• Cache Hit : An event that occurs when an element requested from cache is found in the cache.

• Cache Miss : An event that occurs when an element requested from cache is NOT found in the cache.

• Eviction : The act of removing an element from the cache due to certain criteria algorithm that directly is connected to the state of the element.

• Eviction Policy : The algorithm that decides what element(s) will be evicted from a cache when full or a certain criteria has been met in the cache. (Cache Algorithms)

• LRU : An eviction policy that discards the least recently used items first.

• LFU : An eviction policy that counts how often an item has been accessed and it will discard the items that have been used the least.

• FIFO : An eviction policy that works as a queue, first object in will be the first object out of the cache. So older staler objects are purged.

• Cache Provider : A concrete implementation to a caching engine within CacheBox

• Object Store : An object that stores cached elements and indexes them

• Idle or Last Access Timeout : An expiration time an element receives if it is not accessed.

• Reap : Usually an asynchronous event that cleans a cache from dead elements or expired elements

• Distributed/Partitioned Cache : A form of caching that allows the cache to span multiple servers so that it can grow in size and in capacity. Each machine contains a unique partition of the dataset. Adding machines to the cluster will increase the capacity of the cache. Both read and write access involve network transfer and serialization/deserialization.

• Near Cache : Each cache server contains a small local cache which is synchronized with a larger distributed/partitioned cache, optimizing read performance. There is some overhead involved with synchronizing the caches.

• Replicated : Each cache server contains a full copy of the elements cached

• In Process Cache : A cache that lives inside of the same heap as the application using it.

• Out of Process Cache : A cache that lives as its own process and heap in the most likely the same server as the application using it.

• Eternal Objects : Eternal objects are objects that will never be purged or evicted by the caching engine automatically. The only way to remove them is to recreate the cache or clear them manually.

• Cache Topology : A concept that refers to where data physically resides and how it is accessed in a distributed environment

Here is a list of some of the most common methods you can use to interact with CacheBox. For full details, please view the online API Docs

• addCache(any<ICacheProvider> cache)

Register a new instantiated cache with this cache factory

• addDefaultCache(string name)

Add a default named cache to our registry, create it, config it, register it and return it of type: cachebox

• clearAll()

Clears all the elements in all the registered caches without de-registrations

• configure(CacheBoxConfig config)

Configure the cache factory for operation, called by the init()

• expireAll()

Expires all the elements in all the registered caches without de-registrations

• getCache(string name)

Get a reference to a registered cache in this factory

• getDefaultCache()

Get the default cache provider of type cachebox

• reapAll()

A nice way to call reap on all registered caches

• removeCache(string name)

Try to remove a named cache from this factory

• replaceCache(any<ICacheProvider> cache, any<ICacheProvider> decoratedCache)

Replace a registered named cache with a new decorated cache of the same name

• shutdown()

Recursively sends shutdown commands to all registered caches and cleans up in preparation for shutdown

Common Operation Examples

// Add another default cache type but with the name FunkyCache
funkyCache = cachebox.addDefaultCache("FunkyCache");
// Add some elements to funky Cache
funkyCache.set("Myentry",now(),"20");

// Get a reference to a named cache
cfCache = cacheBox.getCache("CFCache");

// Get a reference to the default named cache
cache = cacheBox.getDefaultCache();

// Remove our funky cache no longer needed
cacheBox.removeCache("FunkyCache");

// Create a new cache a replace a cache, the MyFunkyFunkyCache implements ICacheProvider
newCache = new MyFunkyFunkyCache({maxObjects=200,timeout=30});
// replace the CFCache with this one
cacheBox.replaceCache( "CFCache", newCache );

// Add a new cache to cachebox programmatically
newCache = new MyFunkyFunkyCache("FunkynessCache", {maxObjects=200,timeout=30});
cacheBox.addCache( newCache );

// Send a shutdown command to cachebox
cachebox.shutdown();

Info Remember that some of the CacheBox methods announce events. So please see our event model section to see what kind of events you can listen to when working with CacheBox.

When working with a cache engine you also have to consider how you will get data INTO the cache before you work with it. There are several approaches but I will talk about two methods of content loading:

• Lazy Loading or Reactive Loading : This type of loading is the most typical way to load data into a cache and it happens once data is requested from an external process. Below is a typical example using CacheBox in a service layer call:

/**
* Get some blog categories from the database or cache
*/
function getCategories(){
    var cacheKey = "q-blog-categories";

    //Check if data exists
    local.data = cache.get( cacheKey );
    if( !isNull( local.data ) ){
        return local.data;
    }

    // Else query DB and cache
    var data = blogDAO.getCategories();
    cache.set(cacheKey, data, 120, 20);

    return data;
}

This is great for small content pieces and works well for applications. However, if you have large amounts of data that must be available at application startup or cache startup. Then we recommend looking at the next method.

• Proactive Loading : This approach focuses itself on the loading of resources before the application starts up so content can be loaded. EHCache for example offers cache loaders that you can create that will populate the cache on initializations. CacheBox offers the same capabilities through its event model, so you can tap into the necessary events and then carry your population and loading procedures. For example, you might tap into the afterCacheRegistration event in CacheBox so you might listen to when a cache engine get's created and configured so you can start populating it right at application/cache startup. In this loader you will then have the opportunity to load your data either asynchronously or synchronously. If you will be loading large amounts of data or processor intensive data, we recommend you leverage cfthread and do the loading asynchronously within your event interceptor.

/**
* A cache listener for CacheBox
*/
component{

    /**
    * Listen for cache registrations and load data into the 'bigCache' cache ONLY!
    */
    function afterCacheRegistration(interceptData){
        // Get the registered cache reference from the incoming interception data
        var cache = arguments.interceptData.cache;

        // Only work on the BigCache cache
        if( cache.getName() eq "BigCache" ){

            // Talk to service, get some big data items
            dataItems = service.getBigDataItems();

            //Cache them forever as eternal objects
            cache.setMulti(mapping=dataItems,timeout=0);
        }

    }
}

There are several cache topologies that you can benefit from and it all depends on your business requirements and scalability requirements. I will only mention four distinct approaches for caching. CacheBox at this point can support all caching topologies as the underlying caches can support them. However, at this point in time, the CacheBox caching provider only supports a single instance in-process approach.

Whenever you are leveraging the power of caching, we recommend that you also take into consideration several key factors that need to be evaluated and put into practice in your applications. Below are some key factors that we recommend:

• Thread Safety : Take into consideration that when you cache data/objects or whatever, multiple threads will be trying to access it in your application. Make sure that you have the appropriate locking and synchronization techniques so multiple threads don't interfere with one another. This might be from simple testing procedures to make sure an element exists, to a more strict approach where you create a cache decorator that does hard blocks on cache access via named locks. Don't ever assume that what you ask from the cache actually exists.

• Serialization : If you will be caching to disk, database or using replication, distribution, most likely the caching engines will be serializing or converting your data and objects into byte or string format in order to persist them. Therefore, your objects must be able to support serialization and also be aware that if you are caching complex objects, those objects will be serialized alongside the target object. This is what's called an object graph. Where a serializer will go through the entire object graph (object/data relationships) of the target object and serialize everything. If you have circular references or references to tons of objects, serialization performance degrades and could potentially cause a heap overload and crash your application server as it will recurse forever. ColdFusion 9 introduced the component and property attribute called serializable, which is a boolean attribute you can add to the cfcomponent and cfproperty tags. We recommend using it and marking components and relationships that do NOT need serialization.

<---  Marking a component as NOT serializable --->
<cfcomponent output="false" serializable="false">

</cfcomponent>

<---  Marking a property as NOT serializable --->
<cfproperty name="cacheEngine" serializable="false" />

Caution The default value for the serializable attribute is true.

• Data Format : Determine how you want to store data so it is easy to take that snapshot out of a cache and use. This can be from implementing object state/memento patterns, to leveraging serialization, to pre-defined data structures. Think ahead of HOW your data will be stored in the caches.

• Cache Layers : In our experience, we have seen greater improvement in performance and scalability by planning caching layers. Caching layers is what are the different layers of caching your application will provide from data to objects to event and view fragments. We recommend you analyze your cache layers and plan how they will behave. A perfect live example of caching layers can be seen in our open source ColdFusion CMS, ContentBox Modular CMS. ContentBox leverages query caching, XML/Feed caching, object caching of DAO's, services, some business objects, plugins and event handlers, to view fragment caching and overall event output caching. We use it all baby!

• Cache Limits : There are definite benefits of demarcating limits on your cache. This involves setting up default limits for timeouts, idle timeouts and maximum number of objects within a cache. Studies have shown that leverage memory sensitive data constructs with fixed limit caching parameters can increase performance and overall JVM stability. Look at our cache resources for these studies as they are very interesting.

Cache Aggregator

CacheBox is a cache aggregator, in which you can aggregate different caching engines or types of the same engine into one single umbrella. It gives you built in logging (via LogBox), an event model, synchronization, shutdown/startup procedures, reporting, interaction consoles and best of all a cache agnostic API.

CacheBox gives you the ability to manage and create your own, what we call Cache Providers that talk to different caching engines that you would like to configure in your applications. By aggregating them within CacheBox you get the added benefit of a rich event model for all caches to share, reporting and debugging.

Caching API

These cache providers also share the same interaction API and thus gives you a nice level of abstraction, higher extensibility and flexibility when planning your applications or trying to scale them out.

You can build your applications based on this abstract API and then be able to configure the caches for your applications at runtime. This gives you greater flexibility and scalability when planning and writing your applications as they can be targeted for ANY CFML engine or version.

The Enterprise Caching Engine

Caching has been a central concern in the ColdBox Platform since its very first version. We have always been concerned with mission critical applications, scalability and the ability to provide granular caching aspects to ColdFusion (CFML) applications within a single in-process caching engine.

Foremost, CacheBox behaves as an in-memory cache designed for objects, data, HTML fragments or anything you like. It has various tuning parameters such as default object timeout, default last access timeout, maximum objects to have in cache, a JVM memory threshold, a reaping frequency, eviction policies, an event model and so much more.

We also make use of object stores (inspired by EHCache) for the CacheBox caching engine. This means that CacheBox can be configured to store its cached objects in different locations other than memory. This gives us great flexibility because we offer a wide gamut of storage options plus the concept of actually building your own storages. Currently we offer object stores based on concurrency classes, java soft references (memory sensitive), file storage, JDBC replication, and more coming soon.

Cache Debugger & Reporter

We have a great cache debugger where you can visualize all your configured caches right from within your application. You can see the performance of the cache, the contents and even issue commands to the targeted cache provider.

"In the past, developers didn't have much control over garbage collection or memory management. Java2 has changed that by introducing the java.lang.ref package. The abstract base class Reference is inherited by classes SoftReference, WeakReference and PhantomReference. SoftReferences are well suited for use in applications needing to perform caching."

Why is this? Well, a soft reference is nothing but a wrapper class that wraps an object in memory. Whenever the JVM requires memory and runs its reference rules, it can detect these soft references and decide to purge them if it meets the garbage collector rules. If it purges them, the wrapped object inside of the soft reference is marked for collection, but the java soft reference itself still exists. Therefore, the programmer can determine if the object inside the reference exists or not. If it does not exist, it means the object was garbage collected and I have no more object. I won't go into the implementation semantics of the cache, just theory. Please visit the references to understand more of how the ColdBox cache was built.

In summary, soft references are what determine if an object is still available or not. CacheBox cache can then run maintenance on itself and clean out all of its references for you if you are using the ConcurrentSoftReferenceStore object store.

Useful Resources

• https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/11/docs/api/java.base/java/lang/ref/SoftReference.html

• https://www.baeldung.com/java-soft-references

A single instance cache is an in-process cache that can be used within the same JVM heap as your application. In the ColdFusion world, this cache topology is what ColdFusion 9 actually offers: An instance of ehCache that spawns the entire JVM of the running ColdFusion server. There are pros and cons to each topology and you must evaluate the risks and benefits involved with each approach.

Definitely having a single instance approach is the easiest to setup and use. However, if you need to add more ColdFusion instances or you need to cluster your system, single instance will not be of much use anymore as servers will not be synchronized with the same cached data. CacheBox also allows you to create as many instances of itself as you need and also as many CacheBox caches as you need. This allows you great flexibility to create and configure multiple instance caches in a single ColdFusion server instance. This way if you are in shared hosting you do not have to worry about the underlying cache configuration (which is only 1), but you can configure your caching engines for your application ONLY! This is of great benefit and greater flexibility than dealing with a single cache instance on the ColdFusion server.

Benefits:

• Fast access to data as it leaves in the same processes

• Easy to setup and configure

• One easy configuration if you are using ColdFusion 11 or Lucee

• You can also have multiple CacheBox caching providers running on one machine (Greater Flexibility)

• You can also have multiple CacheBox instances running on one machine or have a shared scope instance (Greater Flexibility)

• Each of your applications, whether ColdBox or not, can leverage CacheBox and create and configure caches (Greater Flexibility)

Cons:

• Shared resources in a single application server

• Shared JVM heap size, thus available RAM

• Limited scalability

• Not fault tolerant

A single instance can be an out-process cache that leaves on its own JVM typically in the same machine as the application server. This approach has also its benefits and cons. A typical example of an out of process cache can be using an instance of CouchDB for storage of your cache components and your applications talk to the cache via REST.

Benefits:

• Still access is fast as it is in the same machine

• Easy to setup and configure

• Might require a windows or *nix service so the cache engine starts up with the machine

• Can leverage its own JVM heap, memory, GC, etc and have more granularities.

• Out of process cache servers can be clustered also to provide you with better redundancy. However, once you start clustering them, each of those servers will need a way to replicate and synchronize each other.

Cons:

• Still shares resources in the server

• Limited scalability

• Needs startup scripts

• Needs a client of some sort to be installed in the application server so it can function and a protocol to talk to it: RMI, JMS, SOAP, REST, etc.

• Not fault tolerant

A replicated cache can exist in multiple application server machines and their contents will be replicated, meaning all caches will contain all the data elements. This type of topology is beneficial as it allows for all members in the application cluster to have availability to its elements. However, there are also some drawbacks due to the amount of chatter and synchronization that must exist in order for all data or cache nodes to have the same data fresh. This approach will provide better scalability and redundancy as you are not limited to one single point of failure. This replicated cache can be in-process or out-process depending on the caching engine you are using.

Benefits:

• Better scalability

• Cache data can survive server restarts if one goes down, better redundancy

• Better cache availability through redundancy

• Higher storage availability

• Ideal for few application servers

Cons:

• A little bit harder to configure and setup

• High serialization and network communication costs

• Could need load balancing

• Can scale on small amounts only

Distributed caching is the big daddy of scalability and extensibility. The crux concept is of partitioning the cache data across the members of the cache cluster and creating a grid of cached data that can scale rather easily. There are several major players out there like with Terracotta, , and our favorite: .

I suggest looking at all options to find what best suits your requirements. Please note that each vendor has their own flavor of distributed caching and might not match our diagram. Our diagram is just a visual representation for knowledge purposes.

Ortus Couchbase Extension

The Ortus Couchbase Extension is a Lucee Server Extension that allows your server to natively connect to a Couchbase NoSQL Server cluster and leverage it for built-in caching, session/client storage and distribution, and much more. With our extension you will be able to scale and extend your Lucee CFML applications with ease.

• Store session/client variables in a distributed Couchbase cluster

• Get rid of sticky session load balancers, come to the round-robin world!

• Session/client variable persistence even after restarts

• Ability to leverage the RAM resource virtual file system as a cluster-wide file system

• Cache connection capablities for providing distributed & highly scalable query, object, template, function caching

Benefits:

• Extreme scalability

• Cache data can survive server restarts if one goes down, better redundancy

• Better cache availability through redundancy

• Higher storage availability

• Higher flexibility

• Your storage increases as more cluster members are added

Cons:

• Harder to configure and setup (Maybe, terracotta and ColdFusion 9 is super easy)

• Not as much serialization and communication costs

• Could need load balancing

CacheBox is architected to act as a cache aggregator but also has its own cache implementation based on a hybrid of ColdFusion and Java. Let's investigate first of all the major classes that make up CacheBox.

class : cachebox.system.logging.LogBox

A reference to either a new instance of LogBox, if running in standalone mode, or a running LogBox instance via the running ColdBox application context.

class : cachebox.system.cache.ICacheProvider

This is the main interface that each caching engine implementation must implement in order for CacheBox to aggregate it and use it. Each implementation can add additional functionality and methods but this is the core contract that each provider must adhere to. CacheBox aggregates 1 or more instances of CacheProviders that implement this interface. You can find all of our CacheBox cache providers in the following location:

/cachebox/system/cache/providers

class : cachebox.system.core.events.EventPoolManager or coldbox.system.web.services.InterceptorService

If you are in standalone mode then CacheBox configures its own internal event manager that is very similar to the ColdBox Interceptor Service. This event manager keeps track of the listeners for each of the interceptions points or events that are broadcasted by CacheBox and its providers.

class : cachebox.system.cache.CacheFactory

The CacheFactory object is the most important object as it represents CacheBox. The class path for this object is coldbox.system.cache.CacheFactory or in standalone mode cachebox.system.cache.CacheFactory.

This is the aggregator or cache overseer that you will interact with to get caches, shutdown caches, perform global cache operations, and startup your CacheBox instance. If you are using CacheBox within a ColdBox application context, then ColdBox does all the configurations and creations for you. It even links your ColdBox context, LogBox and ColdBox Intercepting service for you.

cachebox = new cachebox.system.cache.CacheFactory();

class : coldbox.system.web.Controller

A reference to a running ColdBox application context the CacheBox instance is running under. This will be null if running in standalone mode. However, if you are within a ColdBox application, the CacheProvider and its references can access anything within the running ColdBox application.

Let's delve deeper into the rabbit hole and explore how to configure this bad boy. Our preference is the programmatic approach via a simple data CFC that can encapsulate the CacheBox configuration in one single component. However, at the end of the day all configuration approaches will use the CacheBoxConfig object's methods in some manner.

This is the CFC that you will use to configure CacheBox and its constructor can be called with the following optional arguments which determines your configuration approach:

• none - Means you will be using the CFCs methods for configuration

• CFCConfig - The object reference to the simple data CFC that contains the CacheBox DSL

• CFCConfigPath - The instantiation path of the simple data CFC that contains the CacheBox DSL

No matter what configuration you decide to use, you will always have to instantiate CacheBox with a CacheBoxConfig object of type: cachebox.system.cache.config.CacheBoxConfig. However, you have the option of either working with this CFC directly or creating a more portable configuration.

This portable configuration we denote as a simple data CFC that contains the CacheBox configuration data that represents our CacheBox DSL (Domain Specific Language). This DSL is exactly the same if you are using CacheBox standalone or in any ColdBox application, so it definitely has its benefits.

Tip: Please note that you have full access to the running CacheBox's configuration object or even a specific cache's configuration structure. Therefore, you can easily change the configuration settings for a cache or CacheBox dynamically at runtime.

class : cachebox.system.cache.config.CacheBoxConfig

This is the required configuration object the CacheFactory object needs in order to start itself up. This configuration object can be created and then used to configure all your caches, listeners, scope registrations and logging. We will investigate all the types of configurations available but they all translate down to methods in this configuration object. Ways to configure CacheBox:

• Programmatically via method calls

• Programmatically via a CacheBox DSL or a CacheBox DSL CFC

class : cachebox.system.cache.IColdboxApplicationCache

This interface extends from the original cache provider interface and adds certain methods that MUST be implemented so the cache can work for ColdBox applications. This includes functionality to do event/view caching, clearing/expiring by certain regular expressions and reporting. So if you want to create your own cache implementation for ColdBox applications, then it must adhere to this contract.

class : cachebox.system.cache.store.IObjectStore

A CacheBox cache provider uses the concept of an object store in order to, well, store its cached objects. This can be anything as we have created an interface that anybody can implement and create their own object storages. Just be aware that the CacheBox provider's eviction policies use certain methods for reporting and evictions that MUST be implemented.

In order to create a simple data CFC, just create a new CFC with one required method on it called configure(). This is where you will define the caching configuration data structure in a structure called cacheBox in the variables scope:

**
* A CacheBox configuration data object
*/
component{

    function configure(){
        cacheBox = {

        };
    }
}

The cacheBox structure can be configured with the following keys:

class : cachebox.system.cache.policies.AbstractEvictionPolicy

This is the abstract class that gives the magic to eviction policies under the CacheBox cache provider. It communicates with the internal object stores and asks for specific metadata in specific sorter orders so the policy can execute its algorithm. Our current algorithms are: LRU,LFU, and FIFO. However, you can very easily implement your own.

class : cachebox.system.cache.util.ICacheStats

This interface is the contract for statistics reporting. This is how CacheBox can produce gorgeous charting and reporting based on the implementation of this class.

The caches element is in itself a structure of configuration data for aggregating named cache providers of ANY type. The key is the unique name of the cache to aggregate under this CacheBox instance. The value should be a structure with the following keys:

Example:

// Register all the custom named caches you like here
caches = {
    sampleCache1 = {
        provider="cachebox.system.cache.providers.CacheBoxProvider",
        properties = {
            objectDefaultTimeout="20",
            useLastAccessTimeouts="false",
            reapFrequency="1",
            evictionPolicy="LFU",
            evictCount="1",
            maxObjects="100",
            objectStore="ConcurrentSoftReferenceStore"
        }
    },
    sampleCache2 = {
        provider = "cachebox.system.cache.providers.CFColdboxProvider"
    }
},

CacheBox has a nifty little feature that enables itself to leech onto a specific scope in memory. It basically can auto-register itself in your environment with no further need for persistence or just to expand its location. By default CacheBox registers itself in application scope with a key of cacheBox, but you have complete control on how the scope registration should work.

Customizable Keys:

Example:

// The CacheBox configuration structure DSL
cacheBox = {
    scopeRegistration = {
        enabled = true,
        scope   = "application",
        key     = "cacheBox"
    },
};

"A cache (pronounced /'kæ?/ kash) is a component that improves performance by transparently storing data such that future requests for that data can be served faster" Wikipedia

Caching is everywhere around us these days in all shapes and forms: query caching, data caching, page fragment caching, event caching, etc. Much like how in Forrest Gump you could do all kinds of shrimp dishes :)

In its most basic form, we use caching to accelerate and scale our processes. We might have a certain request that takes time to process due to let’s say in colloquial terms "a big ass query". We can leverage caching by slapping that query up and placing it in cache so we don't have to wait for it again. Our process now only at most take 1 big hit and then can be merrily on their way serving requests. Again, this is a very practical approach to caching. As you will see from this guide, caching can get very very complex and you need the right tools to be able to scale out, configure and tune your caching approaches.

When building enterprise class applications we are faced with many problems dealing with architecture, performance, scalability and so much more. One of these issues might be dealing with expensive queries, but there are also lots of other issues to consider like: expense of object creation/configuration, data retrieval, data/system availability, page output caching, etc. All of these issues can benefit from some kind of caching in order to optimize performance, availability and scalability.

Let's explore some benefits of caching:

• Reduce the amounts of data transfers between processes, network or applications

• Reduce processing time within a system or application

• Reduce I/O access operations

• Reduce database access operations

• Reduce expensive data transformations and live by a 1 hit motto

This is an array of structures that you will use to define cache listeners. This is exactly the same as if you would be declaring ColdBox Interceptors, so order is very important. The order of declaration is the order that they are registered into their specific listening events and also the order in which they fire. The keys to declare for each structure are:

The LogBoxConfig element is used only in standalone mode of operation and tells CacheBox what configuration file to load into LogBox. LogBox is an enterprise ColdFusion (CFML) logging library. This way, you have granular control of how CacheBox and its registered caches will be producing logging and debugging data. If you do not specify a location for a custom LogBox configuration file, then CacheBox will instantiate LogBox with its own default configuration file located at:

cachebox.system.cache.config.LogBox.cfc

Example

// The CacheBox configuration structure DSL
cacheBox = {
    logBoxConfig = "myapp.config.MyLogBoxConfig",
};

class : cachebox.system.cache.policies.IEvictionPolicy

This is the contract for creating eviction policies for usage by the CacheBox cache provider.

The defaultCache element is in itself a structure of configuration data for the default cache provider of type cachebox.system.cache.providers.CacheBoxProvider. This is a reserved cache name and it is MANDATORY to declare and its name or type cannot be changed.

However, if you are using CacheBox within a ColdBox application, the provider will switch itself to cachebox.system.cache.providers.CacheBoxColdBoxProvider by using the coldboxEnabled key. So let's see the configuration keys for our default cache.

Default Cache Properties:

Eviction Policies

• LFU (Least Frequently Used)

• LRU (Least Recently Used)

• FIFO (First In First Out)

• Custom: You can also build your own and pass the instantiation path in this setting

Object Stores

• ConcurrentStore - Uses concurrent hashmaps for increased performance

• ConcurrentSoftReferenceStore - Concurrent hashmaps plus java soft references for JVM memory sensitivity

• DiskStore - Uses a physical disk location for caching (Uses java serialization for complex objects)

• JDBCStore - Uses a JDBC datasource for caching (Uses java serialization for complex objects)

• Custom : You can also build your own and pass the instantiation path in this setting.

Caution : Please note that each object store could have more configuration properties that you will need to add to the configuration structure. To find out about these extra configuration properties, please see the Object Store's section.

Example:

// The CacheBox configuration structure DSL
cacheBox = {
    // Please note that each object store could have more configuration properties
    defaultCache = {
        objectDefaultTimeout = 60,
        objectDefaultLastAccessTimeout = 30,
        useLastAccessTimeouts = true,
        reapFrequency = 2,
        freeMemoryPercentageThreshold = 0,
        evictionPolicy = "LRU",
        evictCount = 1,
        maxObjects = 200,
        // Our default store is the concurrent soft reference
        objectStore = "ConcurrentSoftReferenceStore",
        // This switches the internal provider from normal cacheBox to coldbox enabled cachebox
        coldboxEnabled = false,
        resetTimeoutOnAccess = false
    },
};

Default Configuration

The default configuration file for CacheBox within ColdBox applications can be found here

/coldbox/system/web/config/CacheBox.cfc

This configuration file configures CacheBox with two caches:

• default

• template

The default cache can be used for any type of data caching or object persistence. The template cache is used for event caching and view fragment caching. It is also important to note that the template cache uses the ConcurrentSoftReferenceStore for its objects and the default cache uses the ConcurrentStore for its objects.

This means that event/view caching is subject to available memory via the JVM, a memory sensitive cache. This is essential as you could have lots of events being cached and you want to be considerate with memory concerns. It is also limited to 300 objects.

Now, this is all nice and dandy, but what if I want to configure CacheBox "MY WAY!!"? Well, don't shout, we are just getting there. There are several ways you can configure CacheBox from within your applications, so chose wisely.

Custom Configuration

ColdBox allows for a programmatic approach via the ColdBox configuration object: Coldbox.cfc. So let's look at how the framework loader looks at your configuration for CacheBox configuration details:

• Is there a cachebox DSL variable defined in the configuration structure?

• False:

  • Does a CacheBox.cfc exist in the application's config folder?

    • True : Use that for configuration

    • False: Configure CacheBox with default framework settings found in /coldbox/system/web/config/CacheBox.cfc

• True:

  • Have you defined a configFile key in the cacheBox DSL structure?

    • True: Then use that value to pass into the configuration object so it can load CacheBox using that configuration CFC

    • False: The configuration data (CacheBox DSL) is going to be defined inline here so use that structure for configuration

Info The configuration DSL is exactly the same as you have seen in before with the only distinction that you can add a configFile key that can point to an external configuration CFC.

cacheBox = {
    configFile = "mypath.config.CacheBoxConfig"
};

That's it folks! You can either write inline CacheBox DSL configuration, use by convention a CacheBox.cfc data CFC or use a configFile approach for external file loading. Pick your poison!

The previous CacheBox DSL is a great way to configure CacheBox as it is very portable. However, you can also configure CacheBox by calling methods on the CacheBoxConfig object, which is exactly what we do when we read the CacheBox DSL.

Below are the main methods used for configuring CacheBox which match exactly to the DSL items, so please refer to the DSL items for definitions and settings. Also, for all the methods in this object, check out the API Docs

• init([any CFCConfig], [string CFCConfigPath])

The constructor

• cache(string name, [string provider=], [struct properties={}])

Add a new cache configuration

• defaultCache([numeric objectDefaultTimeout=], [numeric objectDefaultLastAccessTimeout=], [numeric reapFrequency=], [numeric maxObjects=], [numeric freeMemoryPercentageThreshold=], [boolean useLastAccessTimeouts=], [string evictionPolicy=], [numeric evictCount=], [string objectStore=], [boolean coldboxEnabled=])

Add a default cache configuration

• listener(string class, [struct properties={}], [string name=])

Add a new listener configuration

• logBoxConfig(string config)

Set the logBox Configuration path to use

• reset()

Reset the entire configuration

• scopeRegistration([boolean enabled='false'], [string scope='application'], [string key='cachebox'])

Use to define cachebox factory scope registration

Code Examples:

config = new cacheBox.system.cache.config.CacheBoxConfig();

// logbox config & scope chained, yes you can chain any method
config.logBoxConfig( "LogBox" )
    .scopeRegistration( true, "application", "cacheBox" );

// default cache
config.default( maxObjects=500, evictCount=5, objectDefaultTimeout=30 );

// Caches
config.cache( "ehCache", "caches.ehCacheProvider", {configFile="ehCache.xml"} ).
    cache( "template", "cachebox.system.cache.providers.CacheBoxProvider" );

// Listeners
config.listener( "myapp.model.MyListener", "FunkyListener", {} );

This provider can be used for mocking capabilities in your unit tests or any kind of test you are performing. It keeps a simple localized cache inside of a local structure. It should definitely not used for any type of caching at all.

Properties

• None

Our LuceeProvider is an implementation specifically written for Lucee

Properties

We have shipped CacheBox with several CacheBox providers that you can use in your applications. There are basically two modes of operation for a CacheBox provider and it is all determined by the interface they implement:

1. ICacheProvider : A standalone cache provider

2. IColdboxApplicationCache : A cache provider for usage by the ColdBox Framework

The following are the shipped providers:

Each provider has the shared functionality provided by the ICacheProvider and IColdboxApplicationCache interfaces, so I encourage you to look at the CFC API Docs for an in-depth view of their API. Also, please note that each cache provider implementation has also some extra methods and functionality according to their implementation, so please check out the API docs for each provider.

Ortus Couchbase Extension

, the makers of CacheBox, have created a commercial extension for the open source CFML engines Railo and Lucee to support caching distribution features via Couchbase ().

The Ortus Couchbase Extension is a Railo Server Extension that allows your server to natively connect to a Couchbase NoSQL Server cluster and leverage it for built-in caching, session/client storage and distribution, and much more. With our extension you will be able to scale and extend your Railo CFML applications with ease.

The extension will enhance your Lucee server with some of the following :

• Store session/client variables in a distributed Couchbase cluster

• Get rid of sticky session load balancers, come to the round-robin world!

• Session/client variable persistence even after Railo restarts

• Ability to leverage the RAM resource virtual file system as a cluster-wide file system

• Cache connection capabilities for providing distributed & highly scalable query, object, template, function caching

The ConcurrentStore is an object store that uses concurrent hash maps provided by the . Concurrent maps are better suited for caching algorithms as they do not lock the entire map in order to access elements. They work on the concept of row locking. Therefore, the increased performance and increase in throughput is observable by using concurrency maps. Here is a quote from the Java Docs:

"However, even though all operations are thread-safe, retrieval operations do not entail locking, and there is not any support for locking the entire table in a way that prevents all access. Retrieval operations (including get) generally do not block, so may overlap with update operations (including put and remove). Retrievals reflect the results of the most recently completed update operations holding upon their onset."

Properties

• None

You can also find some great research out there about concurrency maps:

CacheBox offers the capability of object stores that can be used to store cached objects. If you look at the following figure you will understand our object model for our object stores:

Each object store is composed into a CacheBox provider for usage of storing and retrieving cached objects. The design principle behind each object store is that each object store implements its own locking, serialization, reading and writing mechanisms that are fronted by a nice API via the CacheBoxProvider object. Also, it is very important to note that the CacheBox eviction policies talk to the object stores in order to get ordered data structures for eviction purposes.

So if you will be creating your own object stores, make sure they implement the right data methods the eviction policies can use for evictions. The CacheBox provider's reaping methods use the object stores in order to get metadata out of the object stores in order to take care of cleanup, expirations and evictions. We definitely encourage you to take a look at the written object store implementations in order to learn how this works.

So let's start investigating each of the object stores that are shipped with CacheBox.

Caution Please note that each object store can have extra properties that need to be set in your cache configuration file.

Our CFColdboxProvider is an implementation specifically written for Adobe ColdFusion 11 and beyond. This provider leverages the engine within ColdFusion 11 and extends the native ColdFusion capabilities by talking to the sessions natively via Java. In this manner we are able to do things like:

• Get extended cached object metadata

• Get overall cache statistics

• Talk to terracotta classes

• Do quiet operations on get, clear, and put

• Check if an element is expired

• Do reporting and content reporting

• Much more

Properties

Each CacheBox provider can have its own set of configuration properties it needs for operation. Our CF providers also have some. Please note, all properties other than "cacheName" are passed through to the underlying EHCache implementation in ColdFusion. The default values may differ if you have edited the ehcache.xml file on your server.

Info Please note that you can configure more than 1 CFColdboxProvider cache engine in your applications that can talk to more than one referenced ColdFusion (EHCache) custom cache.

The BlackholeStore is not something you would actually deploy to a production site. The BlackholeStore is a development tool that simulates caching but never actually caches anything. This store can be useful to help tune an application as it can provide a solid baseline for how things would behave without caching. Anything set into a cache powered by the blackhole store will vanish into a blackhole. Anytime a lookup is performed it will appear is if that object has expired. Finally, if you actually try to get and object you will receive a null.

Properties

• None

The JDBCStore is a nice object storage that leverages a single database table to keep track of its objects. This is great for simple or small scale clusters that need centralized caching. It also follows suit that complex objects are serialized into the tables and simple objects are just saved. The object store can even create the database table for you if need be via its own object store custom properties.

Properties

Adobe ColdFusion + CFTransaction Notes

Adobe ColdFusion (ACF) engines require all queryExecute() statements running within a transaction to have identical datasource, username, and password options. If your application uses the JDBCStore within a <cftransaction> block you may receive the following error message "Usernames and Passwords for all the database tags within the cftransaction tag must be the same". If your application sets the default DSN using this.datasource in your Application.cfc file, you may be able to work around the issue by omitting the dsn, dsnUsername, and dsnPassword properties from the JDBCStore.

The CacheBox provider is our very own enterprise cache implementation that has been part of the core since its initial baby step versions. Our caching engine has matured over the years and it has been proven effective, fast, scalable and very user friendly. Here are the two implementations for our CacheBox provider:

1. CacheBoxProvider : Our base CacheBox provider caching engine

2. CacheBoxColdBoxProvider : A subclass of CacheBoxProvider that enables caching operations for ColdBox applications

Properties

Eviction Policies

Coldbox ships with the following eviction policies

• LRU (Least Recently Used)

• LFU (Least Frequently Used)

• FIFO (First In First Out)

• LIFO (Last In First Out)

• Custom: You can also build your own and pass the instantiation path in this setting

Object Stores

ColdBox ships with the following object stores:

• ConcurrentStore - Uses concurrent hash maps for increased performance

• ConcurrentSoftReferenceStore - Concurrent hash maps plus java soft references for JVM memory sensitivity

• DiskStore - Uses a physical disk location for caching (Uses java serialization for complex objects)

• JDBCStore - Uses a JDBC datasource for caching (Uses java serialization for complex objects)

• Custom : You can also build your own and pass the instantiation path in this setting

The ConcurrentSoftReferenceStore uses a combination of concurrency maps and java soft references. In our introductory sections we introduced java soft references and how it allows us to create placeholders in memory for objects and when the JVM needs memory it has permission to collect these placeholders and thus release memory. This is truly a great combination to have and ColdBox leverages this for its template, event and view fragment caching.

Just remember that when you use this object storage, the time spans are never guaranteed as the JVM has permission to cleanup objects when it sees fit. To get much better performance on the JVM memory heap space and a more active memory, we recommend using this object storage. Research has also indicated that a combination of memory sensitive structures in combination with limits in a cache, can increase performance and optimize its usage. So please make sure limits are set in the cache.

Properties

• None

You can also find some great research out there about concurrency maps and soft references:

CacheBox is incredibly flexible and if you would like to create your own eviction policy, you can! Below are a set of easy steps on how to do this:

1. Create a simple CFC that implements the following class cachebox.system.cache.policies.IEvictionPolicy or use our convenience abstract class and inherit from cachebox.system.cache.policies.AbstractEvictionPolicy

2. Create your own execute() method that will evict items (We recommend looking at existing policies to get an insight on how to do this)

3. Use the policy instantiation path in your cachebox provider properties

Sample Policy

Process Evictions:

The below code is the code used to evict objects from cache

Configuration File

That's it folks! Very easily you can create your own eviction policies and use our built in indexers to just sort the elements in whatever way you like. If not, you can always do it yourself :)

CacheBox also sports a very nice event model that can announce several cache life cycle events and factory life cycle events. You can listen to these events and interact with caches at runtime very easily, whether you are in standalone mode or within a ColdBox application.

Of course, if you are within a ColdBox application, you get the benefit of all the potential of ColdBox Interceptors and if you are in standalone mode, well, you just get the listener and that's it.

Each event execution also comes with a structure of name-value pairs called interceptData that can contain objects, variables and all kinds of data that can be useful for listeners to use. This data is sent by the event caller and each event caller decides what this data sent is.

We have already seen in our previous section all the events that are announced by CacheBox and its providers, but how do we listen?

There are two ways to build CacheBox listeners because there are two modes of operations, but the core is the same. Listeners are simple CFCs that must create methods that match the name of the event they want to listen in. If you are running CacheBox within a ColdBox application, listeners are Interceptors and you declare them and register them exactly the same way that you do with normal interceptors.

Also, these methods can take up to three parameters depending on your mode of operation (standalone or ColdBox). The one main difference between pure CacheBox listeners and ColdBox interceptors are that the configure method for the standalone CacheBox is different. Please see samples in this section.

Examples

So let's say that we want to listen on the beforeCacheFactoryShutdown and on the afterCacheElementRemoved event in our listener.

Coldbox Mode Listener

component{

    function configure(){}

    function beforeCacheFactoryShutdown(event, interceptData, buffer){
        // get factory reference.
        var cacheFactory = arguments.interceptData.cacheFactory;
        // Do my stuff here:

        // I can use a log object because ColdBox is cool and injects one for me already.
        log.info("DUDE, I am going down!!!");
    }

    function afterCacheElementRemoved(event, interceptData, buffer){
        var cache = arguments.interceptData.cache;
        var key = arguments.interceptData.cacheObjectKey;

        log.info("The cache #cache.getName()# just removed the key -> #key#");
    }
}

Standalone Mode Listener

component{

    function configure(cacheBox,properties){
        variables.cacheBox = arguments.cacheBox;
        variables.properties = arguments.properties;

        log = variables.cacheBox.getLogBox().getLogger( this );
    }

    function beforeCacheFactoryShutdown(interceptData){
        // Do your stuff here.
    }

    function afterCacheElementRemoved(interceptData){
        var cache = arguments.interceptData.cache;
        var key = arguments.interceptData.cacheObjectKey;

        log.info("The cache #cache.getName()# just removed the key -> #key#");
    }
}

Please note the configure() method in the standalone listener. This is necessary when you are using CacheBox listeners outside of a ColdBox application. The configure() method receives two parameters:

• cacheBox : An instance reference to the CacheBox factory where this listener will be registered with.

• properties : A structure of properties that passes through from the configuration file.

As you can see from the examples above, each Listener component can listen to multiple events. Now you might be asking yourself, in what order are these listeners executed in? Well, they are executed in the order they are declared in either the ColdBox configuration file as interceptors or the CacheBox configuration file as listeners.

Caution Order is EXTREMELY important for interceptors/listeners. So please make sure you order them in the declaration file in the order you want them to fire.

Creating Your Own Skins

CacheBox also allows for the creation of reporting skins so you can create gorgeous looking reports for its caches, configurations, content, etc. The location of such skins is in the following location:

/cachebox/system/cache/report/skins

The name of the folder inside of the skins folder is the unique name used to specify the skin in the custom tag. You can look at the default skin to learn from it and see how you can build skins yourself.

Skin Attributes

A skin receives attributes or configuration elements via the custom tag used for the report monitor. Basically any attribute you add to the custom tag will be available in the skin's pages in a structure called attributes, makes sense huh?

Tag Caller

A skin also receives a reference to the caller scope via a variable called, drum roll please, caller. So you can also reference the caller variables via this scope.

CacheBox comes with great reporting tools whether you are using it within a ColdBox application or standalone. This section deals with how to do a-la-carte reporting by using the custom tags that CacheBox ships with. Below is the simplest form of usage for the monitor reporting tags:

<cfimport prefix="cachebox" taglib="/cachebox/system/cache/report">

<---  Create CacheBox with default configuration --->
<cfif structKeyExists(url,"reinit") OR NOT structKeyExists(application,"cacheBox")>
    <cfset application.cacheBox   = new cachebox.system.cache.CacheFactory()>
<cfelse>
    <cfset cachebox = application.cacheBox>
</cfif>

<cfoutput>
<html>

    <head>
        <title>CacheBox Monitor Tool</title>
    </head>
    <body>

    <---  Special ToolBar --->
    <div id="toolbar">
        <input type="button" value="Reinit" onclick="window.location='index.cfm?reinit'"/>
    </div>

    <---  Render Report Here --->
    <cachebox:monitor cacheFactory="#cacheBox#"/>

    </body>
</html>
</cfoutput>

That's it! You basically import the tag library from /cachebox/system/cache/report and then use the monitor tag to render out the monitor. What's cool about the monitor is that it is completely skinnable. Please see the CacheBox Report Skins for more information.

Reporting Attributes

Let's check out the attributes for this custom tag:

Info Each skin can implement its own attributes, so always check the skins documentation to see what extra attributes it implements.

Here are some examples of the tag usage:

<cachebox:monitor cacheFactory="#cacheBox#"/>

<cachebox:monitor cacheFactory="#cacheBox#" baseURL="index.cfm?event=cacheMonitor"/>

<cachebox:monitor cacheFactory="#cacheBox#" skin="coolskin"/>

<---  Embedding report in a coldbox application's admin view --->
<cachebox:monitor cacheFactory="#controller.getCacheBox()#"
          baseURL="#event.buildLink(event.getCurrentEvent())#" />

The DiskStore as its name implies, uses a disk to store cached objects under. This can be any location that can be accessible via cffile and cfdirectory. Therefore, you can use Adobe ColdFusion/Lucee resources or virtual RAM locations or even Amazon S3. You can get funky my friends!

Anyways, this storage will look at the incoming target object to cache and if it is a complex object it will serialize to binary and store it on disk. If it is a simple value, it just saves it. This is a great way to provide a centralized template/view caching mechanisms as views are simple strings. You can even connect a farm of servers to talk to a centralized network drive that has centralized view/event template storage. Anyways, you can get funky!

Properties

The CacheBox Provider offers several eviction policies that are used to evict objects from cache when certain situations occur within the cache environment. Again, these eviction policies are only for the CacheBox Cache provider. These eviction situations can include:

• Maximum objects reached

• JVM memory threshold reached

• Manual eviction executions

Below is a refresher on what an eviction policy means:

Eviction Policy: The algorithm that decides what element(s) will be evicted from a cache when full or a certain criteria has been met in the cache. (Cache Algorithms)

Please note that when a cache element is evicted from the cache it usually is expired first so it can be gracefully collected when the CacheBox reaping procedures occur. Therefore, you might see sometimes that the cache actually goes above the maximum objects defined, this is normal.

Caution Please note that no eternal objects are ever evicted from the CacheBox provider. Eternal objects live as long as the CacheBox instance lives for (most likely application scope timeout). So please take that into consideration.

ColdBox ships with the following eviction policies:

CacheBox's aggregation functionality offers a wide gamut of life cycle events that are announced at certain points in execution time. Below are the current events announced by the CacheBox CacheFactory. Remember, this is the CacheFactory and not a CacheBox Cache Provider.

Each cache provider has the potential of announcing life cycle events as it implements it. If you are a cache provider author, then you can use the aggregated EventManager to register, process and announce events a-la-carte. So let's investigate each provider's life cycle events:

CacheBoxProvider-CacheBoxColdBoxProvider Events

CFProvider-CFColdboxProvider Events