Cache Module

[PSchmiedmayer]

Use Case

Different applications require the downloading or larger amounts of data from web services that should be cached on the device. Caching reduces the amount of data loaded from web services, reduces the latency on subsequent loads, and improves the user experience.

Problem

The Spezi ecosystem should provide a simple caching module that allows developers to easily cache and retrieve data in accordance with the caching mechanisms established in the operating system.

Solution

The Caching component should ...

1. Provide mechanisms to easily retrieve values using a unique path, e.g., the URL where the content was downloaded from.
2. The cache should have the possibility to invalidate elements manually or after a specified time that can be configured on the component-basis.
3. Subsequent requests for a non-cached element that are requested while a network request is processed should be enqueued and all subsequently fulfilled once the download is complete or fail when the download cannot be completed.
4. The cache should be located in the caches directory of the application to allow the operating system to quickly clean the cache if it runs out of memory.

Additional context

The API should take advantage of existing programming language features such as async/await and structured concurrency to enable callers to wait for the result and transparently load elements with additional context beyond, e.g., a URL Session request.

Code of Conduct

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