How do I store a Map in a Guava Cache

Question

I had a Map<Range<Double>, String> that checks where a particular Double value (score) is mapped to a String (level). The end users want to be able to dynamically change this mapping, in the long term we would like for there to be a web based GUI where they control this but for the short term they're happy for a file to be in S3 and to editing that whenever a change is needed. I don't want to hit S3 for each request and want to cache this as it doesn't change too frequently(Once a week or so). I don't want to have to make a code change and bounce my service either.

Here is what I have come up with -

public class Mapper() {
    private LoadingCache<Score, String> scoreToLevelCache;

public Mapper() {
    scoreToLevelCache = CacheBuilder.newBuilder()
            .expireAfterWrite(10, TimeUnit.MINUTES)
            .build(new CacheLoader<Score, String>() {
                public String load(Score score) {
                    Map<Range<Double>, String> scoreToLevelMap = readMappingFromS3(); //readMappingFromS3 omitted for brevity
                    for(Range<Double> key : scoreToLevelMap.keySet()) {
                        if(key.contains(score.getCount())) { return scoreToLevelMap.get(key); }
                    }
                    throw new IllegalArgumentException("The score couldn't be mapped to a level. Either the score passed in was incorrect or the mapping is incorrect");
                }
            }); 
}

public String getContentLevelForScore(Score Score) {
    try {
        return scoreToLevelCache.get(Score);
    } catch (ExecutionException e) { throw new InternalServerException(e); }
  } 
}

The obvious problem with this approach is in the load method when I do Map<Range<Double>, String> scoreToLevelMap = readMappingFromS3(); For each key I'm loading the entire map over and over. This isn't a performance issue but it could become one when the size increases, in any case this is not an efficient approach.

I think that keeping this entire map in the cache would be better, but I'm not sure how to do that here. Can anyone help with this or suggest a more elegant way of achieving this.

Answer 1

Guava has a different mechanism for "a cache that only ever contains one value"; it's called Suppliers.memoizeWithExpiration.

private Supplier<Map<Range<Double>, String> cachedMap = 
    Suppliers.memoizeWithExpiration(
        new Supplier<Map<Range<Double>, String>() {
            public Map<Range<Double>, String> get() {
                return readMappingFromS3();
            }
        }, 10, TimeUnit.MINUTES);

public String getContentLevelForScore(Score score) {
    Map<Range<Double>, String> scoreMap = cachedMap.get();
    // etc.
}

Answer 2

Do not mix caching and business logic. Unless your score mapping is huge AND you can load individual pieces, e.g. using readMappingFromS3(Double d) - simply cache the whole map.

    public static final String MAGIC_WORD = "oh please please give me my data!!!";
    private final LoadingCache<String, Map<Range<Double>, String>> scoreToLevelCache;


    public Mapper() {
        scoreToLevelCache = CacheBuilder.newBuilder()
                .expireAfterWrite(10, TimeUnit.MINUTES)
                .build(new CacheLoader<String, Map<Range<Double>, String>>() {
                    public Map<Range<Double>, String> load(String score) {
                        return readMappingFromS3(); //readMappingFromS3 omitted for brevity
                    }
                });
    }

    public Map<Range<Double>, String> getScoreMap() {
        try {
            return scoreToLevelCache.get(MAGIC_WORD);
        } catch (ExecutionException e) {
            throw new InternalServerException(e);
        }
    }

Fetch level name like this

    public String findLevel(final Double score) {
        final Map<Range<Double>, String> scoreMap = getScoreMap();
        for (final Range<Double> key : scoreMap.keySet()) {
            if (key.contains(score)) {
                return scoreMap.get(key);
            }
        }
        ...
    }