Caching

Any template or component can be cached using the cache argument to the <%page>, <%def> or <%block> directives:

<%page cached="True"/>

template text

The above template, after being executed the first time, will store its content within a cache that by default is scoped within memory. Subsequent calls to the template’s render() method will return content directly from the cache. When the Template object itself falls out of scope, its corresponding cache is garbage collected along with the template.

Caching requires that the beaker package be installed on the system.

The caching flag and all its options can be used with the <%def> tag.

<%def name="mycomp" cached="True" cache_timeout="30" cache_type="memory">
    other text
</%def>

... and equivalently with the <%block> tag, anonymous or named:

<%block cached="True" cache_timeout="30" cache_type="memory">
    other text
</%block>

Cache arguments

The various cache arguments are cascaded from their default values, to the arguments specified programmatically to the Template or its originating TemplateLookup, then to those defined in the <%page> tag of an individual template, and finally to an individual <%def> tag within the template. This means you can define, for example, a cache type of dbm on your TemplateLookup, a cache timeout of 60 seconds in a particular template’s <%page> tag, and within one of that template’s <%def> tags cache=True, and that one particular def will then cache its data using a dbm cache and a data timeout of 60 seconds.

The options available are:

• cached="False|True" - turn caching on

• cache_timeout - number of seconds in which to invalidate the cached data. after this timeout, the content is re-generated on the next call.

• cache_type - type of caching. memory, file, dbm, or memcached.

• cache_url - (only used for memcached but required) a single IP address or a semi-colon separated list of IP address of memcache servers to use.

• cache_dir - In the case of the file and dbm cache types, this is the filesystem directory with which to store data files. If this option is not present, the value of module_directory is used (i.e. the directory where compiled template modules are stored). If neither option is available an exception is thrown.

  In the case of the memcached type, this attribute is required and it’s used to store the lock files.

• cache_key - the “key” used to uniquely identify this content in the cache. the total namespace of keys within the cache is local to the current template, and the default value of “key” is the name of the def which is storing its data. It is an evaluable tag, so you can put a Python expression to calculate the value of the key on the fly. For example, heres a page that caches any page which inherits from it, based on the filename of the calling template:

<%page cached="True" cache_key="${self.filename}"/>

${next.body()}

## rest of template

Accessing the Cache

The Template, as well as any template-derived namespace, has an accessor called cache which returns the Cache object for that template. This object is a facade on top of the Beaker internal cache object, and provides some very rudimental capabilities, such as the ability to get and put arbitrary values:

<%
    local.cache.put("somekey", type="memory", "somevalue")
%>

Above, the cache associated with the local namespace is accessed and a key is placed within a memory cache.

More commonly the cache object is used to invalidate cached sections programmatically:

template = lookup.get_template('/sometemplate.html')

# invalidate the "body" of the template
template.cache.invalidate_body()

# invalidate an individual def
template.cache.invalidate_def('somedef')

# invalidate an arbitrary key
template.cache.invalidate('somekey')

API Reference

class mako.cache.Cache(id, starttime)

Bases: object

Represents a data content cache made available to the module space of a Template object.

Cache is a wrapper on top of a Beaker CacheManager object. This object in turn references any number of “containers”, each of which defines its own backend (i.e. file, memory, memcached, etc.) independently of the rest.

get(key, **kwargs)

Retrieve a value from the cache.

Parameters:

• key – the value’s key.
• **kwargs – cache configuration arguments. The backend is configured using these arguments upon first request. Subsequent requests that use the same series of configuration values will use that same backend.

invalidate(key, **kwargs)

Invalidate a value in the cache.

Parameters:

• key – the value’s key.
• **kwargs – cache configuration arguments. The backend is configured using these arguments upon first request. Subsequent requests that use the same series of configuration values will use that same backend.

invalidate_body()

Invalidate the cached content of the “body” method for this template.

invalidate_closure(name)

Invalidate a nested <%def> within this template.

Caching of nested defs is a blunt tool as there is no management of scope - nested defs that use cache tags need to have names unique of all other nested defs in the template, else their content will be overwritten by each other.

invalidate_def(name)

Invalidate the cached content of a particular <%def> within this template.

put(key, value, **kwargs)

Place a value in the cache.

Parameters:

• key – the value’s key.
• value – the value
• **kwargs – cache configuration arguments. The backend is configured using these arguments upon first request. Subsequent requests that use the same series of configuration values will use that same backend.