How to cache data in a MVC application

Question

I have read lots of information about page caching and partial page caching in a MVC application. However, I would like to know how you would cache data.

In my scena

Answer 1

Here's an improvement to Hrvoje Hudo's answer. This implementation has a couple of key improvements:

• Cache keys are created automatically based on the function to update data and the object passed in that specifies dependencies
• Pass in time span for any cache duration
• Uses a lock for thread safety

Note that this has a dependency on Newtonsoft.Json to serialize the dependsOn object, but that can be easily swapped out for any other serialization method.

ICache.cs

public interface ICache
{
    T GetOrSet(Func getItemCallback, object dependsOn, TimeSpan duration) where T : class;
}

InMemoryCache.cs

using System;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Runtime.Caching;
using Newtonsoft.Json;

public class InMemoryCache : ICache
{
    private static readonly object CacheLockObject = new object();

    public T GetOrSet(Func getItemCallback, object dependsOn, TimeSpan duration) where T : class
    {
        string cacheKey = GetCacheKey(getItemCallback, dependsOn);
        T item = MemoryCache.Default.Get(cacheKey) as T;
        if (item == null)
        {
            lock (CacheLockObject)
            {
                item = getItemCallback();
                MemoryCache.Default.Add(cacheKey, item, DateTime.Now.Add(duration));
            }
        }
        return item;
    }

    private string GetCacheKey(Func itemCallback, object dependsOn) where T: class
    {
        var serializedDependants = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(dependsOn);
        var methodType = itemCallback.GetType();
        return methodType.FullName + serializedDependants;
    }
}

Usage:

var order = _cache.GetOrSet(
    () => _session.Set().SingleOrDefault(o => o.Id == orderId)
    , new { id = orderId }
    , new TimeSpan(0, 10, 0)
);