What an issue I’m trying to solve

Now I’m trying to solve a general problem. We have a lot of idempotent methods, methods that have no side effects and return the same result for the same arguments. In addition, we have some methods that read data from somewhere else, but the data is rarely changed.

We can, and do, use caching to improve response time in this case. The problem is that all these methods are different, as are the ways we use caches (from local value holders to hash maps to EhCache). So we would like to unify a caching approach to be able to configure different caches, their eviction and capacity policies, and the way we store them.

Also, I don’t want to overload the business code with extra support code.

Please compare without cache:

public Value get() {
	return readValue();
}

and with cache:

public Value get() {
	var value = cache.get("value");
	if (value != null) {
		return value;
	}

	value = readValue();
	cache.put("value", value);
	return value
}

Changes I’ve made before

First, I’ve unified the caching interface and replaced it in places already known:

public interface Cache<K, V> {
	V get(K key);
	void put(K key, V value);
}

public final class CacheManager {
	public static <K, V> Cache<K, V> getInstance(String region) {
		...
	}
}

Now code with caching looks even uglier:

public Value get() {
	var cache = CacheManager.getInstance("region"); 
	var value = cache.get("value");
	if (value != null) {
		return value;
	}

	value = readValue();
	cache.put("value", value);
	return value
}

Luckily, mankind invents AOP to solve this kind of task.

Aspect oriented programming overview

AOP allows you to add actions (called Advice) to some points in an application (called Join points) specified by expressions (called Pointcut). All this stuff together is called Aspect.

So in a few steps:

You have a method you would like to improve. This is your Join point

  package com.example.apects;  
  
  public class Example {  
	  
      public int calculateTwoPlusTwo() {  
          return 4;  
      }  
  }

Write what you would like to do. It is your Advice

  public class ExampleAspect {  
	  
      public int returnFive() {  
          return 5;  
      }  
  }

Specify where you would like to apply it. It is you Pointcut

 @Aspect  
 public class ExampleAspect {  
	  
     @Pointcut("execution(public int com.example.apects.Example.calculateTwoPlusTwo())")  
     public void returnFivePointcut() {  
     }  
     ...  
 }

Add bind all together. Now you have Aspect

 @Aspect  
 public class ExampleAspect {  
	  
     @Pointcut("execution(public int com.example.apects.Example.calculateTwoPlusTwo())")  
     public void returnFivePointcut() {  
     }  
	  
     @Around("returnFivePointcut()")  
     public Object returnFive() {  
         return 5;  
     }  
 }

Applying aspects for the caches problem

As you may see above, I need to know and specify all methods I would like to wrap with caching. Bad news, there is no pattern in method names I could use to reduce the number of pointcuts. The good news, Java has annotations and Aspects that may work with them.

So I can do something like:

Create custom annotation

@Target({ElementType.METHOD})  
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)  
public @interface Cacheable {  
  String value() default "common";  
}

Write Aspect

@Aspect  
public class CachingAspect {  
  
  @Pointcut("@annotation(cacheable)")  
  public void cachingAnnotation(Cacheable cacheable) {}  
  
  @Around("cachingAnnotation(cacheable)")  
  public Object checkCache(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp, Cacheable cacheable) throws Throwable {  
      var cache = CacheManager.getInstance(cachable.value());  
      var value = cache.get("value");  
      if (value != null) {  
          return value;  
      }  
      value = pjp.proceed();  
      cache.put("value", value);  
      return value;  
  }  
}

Put annotation to target method:

@Cacheble("region")
public Value get() {
	return readValue();
}

Looks good. I have caching separated from business code but:

I need to solve an issue with the cache key
- Somehow the logic should depend on the method name and argument
I don’t have any clue if the aspect was really applied to a method or not (just IDE highlights)

For first issue, I would use a full class and target method names and args as array. I would need to override equals\hashCode for arguments, and some arguments can be excluded. But I will care about it later.

@Aspect  
public class CachingAspect {  
  
	...
	  
	@Around("cachingAnnotation(cacheable)")  
	public Object checkCache(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp, Cacheable cacheable) throws Throwable {  
	    var cache = CacheManager.getInstance(cacheable.value());  
	    Signature signature = pjp.getSignature();  
	    if (!(signature instanceof MethodSignature)) {  
	        return pjp.proceed();
	    }  
	  
	    MethodSignature methodSignature = (MethodSignature)signature;  
	    Method method = methodSignature.getMethod();  
	    CacheKey key = new CacheKey(  
	            method.getDeclaringClass().getCanonicalName(),  
	            method.getName(),  
	            pjp.getArgs()  
	    );  
	  
	    var value = cache.get(key);  
	    if (value != null) {  
	        return value;  
	    }  
	    value = pjp.proceed();  
	  
	    cache.put(key, value);  
	    return value;  
	}  
	  
	public static class CacheKey {  
	    private final String className;  
	    private final String methodName;  
	    private final Object[] args;  
	  
	    public CacheKey(String className, String methodName, Object[] args) {  
	        this.className = className;  
	        this.methodName = methodName;  
	        this.args = args;  
	    }  
	  
	    @Override  
	    public boolean equals(Object o) {  
			...    
		}  
	  
	    @Override  
	    public int hashCode() {  
		    ...
	    }  
	}
}

About the second issue, I will use the AspectJ maven plugin for compile time weaving. The plugin has a showWeaveInfo option to log all information about what and how is weaved.

<build>  
    <plugins>
	    <plugin>
			<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>  
            <artifactId>aspectj-maven-plugin</artifactId>  
            <version>1.14.0</version>  
            <configuration>
				<complianceLevel>11</complianceLevel>  
                <source>11</source>  
                <target>11</target>  
                <showWeaveInfo>true</showWeaveInfo>
            </configuration>
			<executions>
				<execution>
					<goals>
						<goal>compile</goal>  
					</goals>
				</execution>
			</executions>
		</plugin>
	</plugins>
</build>

Once build is done, I may check logs

[INFO] Join point 'method-call(com.example.apects.Example$Value com.example.apects.Example.getValue())'
       in Type 'com.example.apects.Example' (Example.java:7) advised by around advice from 
       'com.example.apects.CachingAspect' (CachingAspect.java:22)
[INFO] Join point 'method-execution(com.example.apects.Example$Value com.example.apects.Example.getValue())'
       in Type 'com.example.apects.Example' (Example.java:12) advised by around advice from 
       'com.example.apects.CachingAspect' (CachingAspect.java:22)

OK, here I may see that my join point was advised twice, so my code will also be called twice.

the first time in method invocation point (method-call)
the second time in method (method-execution)

So I would like to modify the pointcut to be used only in execution because I would like to cache only methods in my project. If I cache some methods in a third-party library, I need to use a method-call advice to put cache-related code around method invocation.

So I will add execution(* *.*(..)) into advice. You may read it like this: execution of any method in any class with any arguments and any modifier.

@Around(value = "execution(* *.*(..)) && cachingAnnotation(cacheable)", argNames = "pjp,cacheable")  
public Object checkCache(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp, Cacheable cacheable) throws Throwable {  
    ...
}

Rebuild and check logs:

[INFO] Join point 'method-execution(com.example.apects.Example$Value com.example.apects.Example.getValue())' 
       in Type 'com.example.apects.Example' (Example.java:12) advised by around advice from 
       'com.example.apects.CachingAspect' (CachingAspect.java:22)

How to change already written code: Aspects

What an issue I’m trying to solve

Changes I’ve made before

Aspect oriented programming overview

Applying aspects for the caches problem

About Vladislav Bochenin