ASP.Net AppFabric Cache missing Flush/Clear and Count/GetCount methods?

Question

I am trying to convert a solution using EntLib into using AppFabric caching. By help of a few extension methods this is a fairly pain-free process.

Extension methods I use:

public static bool Contains(this DataCache dataCache, string key)
{
    return dataCache.Get(key) != null;
}

public static object GetData(this DataCache dataCache, string key)
{
    return dataCache.Get(key);
}

But there are two features of EntLib I find difficult to convert. Namely "Count" (counting number of keys in cache) and "Flush" (removing all data from cache). Both could be solved if I could iterate the keys in cache.

There is a method called ClearRegion(string region), but that required me to specify a region name on all Get/Put/Add-methods I use, which would require some manual error-prone work.

Is there any way to get a list of keys in cache?
Is there a default region name I can use?
How can I flush the cache when I haven't used a region name?

Answer 1

See my previous answer for my speculation as to how the cache works internally when you don't specify a region, and how you can get the count of objects that aren't in a named region.

We can build a Flush method using the same technique:

public void Flush (this DataCache cache)
{
    foreach (string regionName in cache.GetSystemRegions()) 
    {     
        cache.ClearRegion(regionName) 
    } 
}

As I said there, I think named regions are probably the way to go - it seems to me that using them solves more problems than it creates.