In Spring Boot, caching is a mechanism used to store frequently accessed data in memory so that subsequent requests for the same data can be served faster.
Spring Boot provides caching support through the Spring Cache Abstraction, which allows developers to integrate caching seamlessly into their applications.
Here’s how it works:
Annotation-based Approach: Developers can use annotations like @Cacheable, @CachePut, and @CacheEvict to mark methods for caching.
Cache Managers: Spring Boot supports various cache managers such as Ehcache, Redis, ConcurrentMapCache, etc., which handle caching operations and storage.
Configuration: Developers can configure caching behavior and cache managers in the application properties or through Java configuration.
Example:
Let’s say we have a method in a service class that fetches user details from a database:
public class UserService {
@Autowired
private UserRepository userRepository;
@Cacheable(“users”)
public User getUserById(Long userId) {
// This method will only be executed if the data is not cached
return userRepository.findById(userId).orElse(null);
}
}
In this example, the @Cacheable(“users”) annotation instructs Spring to cache the result of the getUserById method with the key “users”. Subsequent calls to this method with the same userId will return the cached result instead of executing the method again.
This caching mechanism helps improve the performance and scalability of Spring Boot applications by reducing the load on databases and expensive computations.
