Python in-memory cache with time to live

Question

I have multiple threads running the same process that need to be able to to notify each other that something should not be worked on for the next n seconds its not the end o

Answer 1

I know this is a little old, but for those who are interested in no third-party dependencies, this is a minor wrapper around the builtin functools.lru_cache (I noticed Javier's similar answer after writing this, but figured I post it anyway since this doesn't require Django):

import functools
import time


def time_cache(max_age, maxsize=128, typed=False):
    """Least-recently-used cache decorator with time-based cache invalidation.

    Args:
        max_age: Time to live for cached results (in seconds).
        maxsize: Maximum cache size (see `functools.lru_cache`).
        typed: Cache on distinct input types (see `functools.lru_cache`).
    """
    def _decorator(fn):
        @functools.lru_cache(maxsize=maxsize, typed=typed)
        def _new(*args, __time_salt, **kwargs):
            return fn(*args, **kwargs)

        @functools.wraps(fn)
        def _wrapped(*args, **kwargs):
            return _new(*args, **kwargs, __time_salt=int(time.time() / max_age))

        return _wrapped

    return _decorator

And its usage:

@time_cache(10)
def expensive(a: int):
    """An expensive function."""
    time.sleep(1 + a)


print("Starting...")
expensive(1)
print("Again...")
expensive(1)
print("Done")

NB this uses time.time and comes with all its caveats. You may want to use time.monotonic instead if available/appropriate.