Lightly - Ruby File Cache

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Lightly is a file cache for performing heavy tasks, lightly.

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Install

$ gem install lightly

Or with bundler:

ruby gem 'lightly'

Usage

```ruby require ‘lightly’

lightly = Lightly.new

content = lightly.get ‘key’ do # Heavy operation here entire_internet.download end ```

This will look for a cached object with the given key and return it if it exists and not older than 1 hour. Otherwise, it will perform the operation inside the block, and save it to the cache object.

By default, the cached objects are stored in the ./cache directory, and expire after 60 minutes. The cache directory will be created as needed.

In addition, the provided key is hashed to its MD5 representation.

You can change these settings on initialization:

ruby lightly = Lightly.new dir: 'tmp/my_cache', life: 7200, hash: false

Or later:

ruby lightly = Lightly.new lightly.dir = 'tmp/my_cache' lightly.life = 7200 # seconds lightly.hash = false

To check if a key is cached, use the cached? method:

```ruby lightly = Lightly.new lightly.cached? ‘example’ # => false

content = lightly.get ‘example’ do open(‘http://example.com’).read end

lightly.cached? ‘example’ # => true ```

You can enable/disable the cache at any time:

```ruby lightly = Lightly.new lightly.disable lightly.enabled? # => false

content = lightly.get ‘example’ do open(‘http://example.com’).read end

lightly.cached? ‘example’ # => false

lightly.enable

content = lightly.get ‘example’ do open(‘http://example.com’).read end

lightly.cached? ‘example’ # => true ```

To flush the cache, call:

ruby lightly = Lightly.new lightly.flush

To clear the cache for a given key, call:

ruby lightly = Lightly.new lightly.clear 'example'

If your block returns false or nil, the data will not be cached:

```ruby result = cache.get ‘test’ do false end

puts cache.cached? ‘test’ # => false ```

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For a similar gem that provides caching specifically for HTTP downloads, see the WebCache gem