How to make @Cacheable return null when not found in cache but do not cache the result?

Question

Following @Cacheable annotation

@Cacheable(value="books", key="#isbn")
public Book findBook(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)

• looks up in the cache based on the key
• if found return the result from cache
• if not found evaluates method
• updates the cache
• return the result

So that next time this method is called with same arguments it will be fetched from cache.

What I want instead is just to

• Look up in the cache based on key
• if found return the result from cache
• if not found return null

I don't want to update the cache in case of cache-miss, is there any way to do this using spring Annotation

Answer 1

Here is what I ended up with, trick was to use 'unless' to our advantage

@Cacheable(value="books", key="#isbn", unless = "#result == null")
public Book findBookFromCache(ISBN isbn, boolean checkWarehouse, boolean includeUsed)
{
    return null;
}

this method

• Looks up in the cache based on key
• if found return the result from cache
• if not found evaluates method that return null
• return value is matched with unless condition (which always return true)
• null value do not get cached
• null value is returned to caller