MapMemory

Simple in-memory cache conception built on Map.

• Installation
• Conception
• Usage
  • Collections
  • Reusable properties
  • Scoped and Shared values
  • Reactive Style
• Advanced usage
  • MapMemory Lifetime
  • Testing
• Migration Guide
  • Upgrading from v1.1
• Contributing
• License

Installation

Add dependencies:

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    implementation("com.redmadrobot.mapmemory:mapmemory:2.1")

    // or if you want to work with MapMemory in reactive style, add one of
    implementation("com.redmadrobot.mapmemory:mapmemory-coroutines:2.1")
    implementation("com.redmadrobot.mapmemory:mapmemory-rxjava2:2.1")
    implementation("com.redmadrobot.mapmemory:mapmemory-rxjava3:2.1")

    // if you want to test code that uses MapMemory
    testImplementation("com.redmadrobot.mapmemory:mapmemory-test:2.1")
}

Conception

Kotlin provides delegates to access values in map:

val map = mapOf("answer" to 42)
val answer: Int by map
println(answer) // 42

This library uses this idea to implement in-memory storage.

There are two simple principles:

• MapMemory is a singleton, and it is shared between many consumers
• MapMemory holds data but not knows what data it holds

Usage

📝 If you use any kind of DI framework, you should provide MapMemory with Singleton scope:

@Provides
@Singleton
fun provideMapMemory(): MapMemory = MapMemory()

If you don't, you should create a single instance of MapMemory and use it everywhere.

Imagine, you have UsersRepository used to get users' information from API. You want to remember the last requested user. Let's store it into a MapMemory:

class UsersRepository(
    private val api: Api,
    memory: MapMemory,              // (1) Inject MapMemory into constructor
) {

    var lastUser: User? by memory   // (2) Declare in-memory property using delegate
        private set

    suspend fun getUser(email: String): User {
        return api.getUser(email)
            .also { lastUser = it } // (3) Use the property
    }
}

MapMemory is a singleton, but UsersRepository is not. Property lastUser is tied to MapMemory lifetime, so it will survive UsersRepository recreation.

You can specify the default value that will be used when the value you're trying to read is not written yet. For example, we don't want nullable User, but want to get placeholder object User.EMPTY instead:

var lastUser: User by memory { User.EMPTY }

Collections

You can write the following code to store mutable list in MapMemory:

val users: MutableList<User> by memory { mutableListOf() }

Boilerplate. Fortunately, there are shorthand accessors to store lists and maps:

val users by memory.mutableList<User>()

Accessors mutableList and mutableMap use concurrent collections under the hood.

Feel free to create your accessors if needed.

Reusable properties

If you want to keep the same value on [MapMemory.clear] and clear the value instead of removing, you can create reusable property. Such properties use the given clear lambda to clear the current value.

class Counter {
    fun reset() { /*...*/
    }
}

val counter: Counter by memory(clear = { it.reset() }) { Counter() }

Reusable properties are especially useful for reactive types like Flow because you don't need to re-subscribe to flow after MapMemory was cleared.

Info
Many of default accessors are already return reusable properties. See accessor's description to check if it returns reusable property.

Scoped and Shared values

Let's look at how MapMemory works under the hood. We have a class with in-memory property declared with delegate:

package com.example

class TokenStorage(memory: MapMemory) {
    var authToken: String by memory
}

MapMemory is MutableMap<String, Any>. Delegate accesses map value by key retrieved from property name. This behavior differs for two types of in-memory property delegates:

• Scoped to the class where the property is declared. Property key is combination of class and property name: com.example.TokenStorage#authToken
• Shared between all classes by the specified key. All properties are scoped by default, you can share it with the function shared.

Property authToken is scoped to class TokenStorage, but we can share it:

// It is a good practice to declare constants for shared keys.
const val KEY_AUTH_TOKEN = "authToken"

class TokenStorage(memory: MapMemory) {
    var authToken: String by memory.shared(KEY_AUTH_TOKEN)
}

class Authenticator(memory: MapMemory) {
    // Property name may be different
    var savedToken: String by memory.shared(KEY_AUTH_TOKEN)
}

Both TokenStorage and Authenticator will use the same value.

⚠️ Keep in mind that it is just an example. In real code it may be more reasonable to inject TokenStorage into Authenticator instead of sharing in-memory property by key.

Reactive Style

Reactive subscription to values is useful to keep data on all screens up to date.

To use MapMemory in reactive style, replace dependency mapmemory with one of the following:

• mapmemory-coroutines
• mapmemory-rxjava2
• mapmemory-rxjava3

These modules provide accessors for reactive types:

// with coroutines
val selectedOption: MutableStateFlow<Option> by memory.stateFlow(Option.DEFAULT)

// with RxJava
val selectedOption: BehaviorSubject<Option> by memory.behaviorSubject()

⚠️ You can use only one of these dependencies at the same time Otherwise build will fail due to duplicates in the classpath.

MapMemory provides the type ReactiveMutableMap. It works similar to MutableMap but enables you to observe data in a reactive manner. There are methods to observe one or all map values. You can implement cache-first approach using ReactiveMutableMap:

class UsersRepository(
    api: Api,
    memory: MapMemory,
) {
    private val usersCache by memory.reactiveMutableMap<String, User>()

    /** Returns stream of users from cache. */
    fun getUsersFlow(): Flow<List<User>> = usersCache.valuesFlow

    /** Returns stream of one user from cache. */
    fun getUserFlow(id: String): Flow<User> = usersCache.getValueFlow(id)

    /** Update users in cache. */
    suspend fun fetchUsers() {
        val users: List<User> = api.getUsers()
        usersCache.replaceAll(users.associateBy { it.id })
    }
}

class UsersRepository(
    api: Api,
    memory: MapMemory,
) {
    private val usersCache by memory.reactiveMutableMap<String, User>()

    /** Returns stream of users from cache. */
    fun getUsersObservable(): Observable<List<User>> = usersCache.valuesObservable

    /** Returns stream of one user from cache. */
    fun getUserObservable(id: String): Observable<User> = usersCache.getValueObservable(id)

    /** Update users in cache. */
    fun fetchUsers() {
        val users: List<User> = api.getUsers()
        usersCache.replaceAll(users.associateBy { it.id })
    }
}

Coroutines

mapmemory-coroutines adds accessors for coroutines types:

📝 Coroutines implementation of reactive map uses SharedFlow under the hood, so it will be triggered even if its content is not changed.

RxJava

mapmemory-rxjava2 and mapmemory-rxjava3 adds accessors for RxJava types:

Advanced usage

MapMemory Lifetime

It may be useful to create MapMemory instances with a different lifetime. You can use it to control the lifetime of the data stored within.

/** MapMemory, available during a session and cleared on logout. */
@Singleton
class SessionMemory @Inject constructor() : MapMemory()

/** MapMemory, available during the app lifetime. */
@Singleton
class AppMemory @Inject constructor() : MapMemory()

Keep in mind that you should manually clear SessionMemory on logout.

📝 Instead of creating subclasses, you can provide MapMemory with qualifiers.

KAPT: 'IllegalStateException: Couldn't find declaration file' on delegate with inline getValue operator

Note
This bug was fixed in Kotlin 1.8.20. Consider to update Kotlin.

There is the bug in Kotlin Compiler that affects MapMemory if you create subclasses - KT-46317. You can use module mapmemory-kapt-bug-workaround as a workaround:

dependencies {
    implementation("com.redmadrobot.mapmemory:mapmemory-kapt-bug-workaround:[latest-version]")
}

- val someValue: String by memory
+ val someValue: String by memory.value()

Testing

Module mapmemory-test provides utilities helping to test code that uses MapMemory.

Imagine you want to build memory filled with mock data for the following class:

package com.example

class UserCache(memory: MapMemory) {
    var name: String by memory
    var ages: Int by memory
}

You can put it by key:

val memory = MapMemory()
memory["com.example.UserCache#name"] = "John Doe"
memory["com.example.UserCache#ages"] = 42

It is easy to make mistake and this approach requires knowing how MapMemory work under the hood. Using mapMemoryOf and scopedKeyOf you can build mock MapMemory much easier:

val memory = mapMemoryOf(
    scopedKeyOf(UserCache::name) to "John Doe",
    scopedKeyOf(UserCache::ages) to 42,
)

You can also get or set scoped values using type-safe functions putScoped and getScoped:

memory.putScoped(UserCache::name, "Jane Doe")
memory.getScoped(UserCache::name)

There are alternate syntax to use if properties in class are private and can't be accessed via reference:

scopedKeyOf<UserStorage>("name")
memory.putScoped<UserStorage>("name", "Jane Doe")
memory.getScoped<UserStorage>("name")

Migration Guide

Upgrading from v1.1

Note
To make upgrade to the latest version easier, you should:

1. Upgrade to v2.0
2. Resolve all deprecations
3. Upgrade to the latest version

Potentially breaking changes

Collections accessors

Now accessors map and list return delegates to access immutable collections. You should use mutableMap and mutableList for mutable versions of collections.

Closed access to getOrPutProperty

Extension getOrPutProperty become internal (it already was in internal package), use operator MapMemory.invoke instead.

-var counter: Int by memory.getOrPutProperty { 0 }
+var counter: Int by memory { 0 }

Scoped and Shared values

Read "Scoped and Shared values" section. If you are sharing properties between classes by name, you should make these properties shared.

API Changes

Accessor .nullable() is deprecated

Accessor nullable() is not needed now. You can just declare a nullable field:

-val selectedOption: String? by memory.nullable()
+val selectedOption: String? by memory

.withDefault { ... } is banned from use

withDefault is no more compatible with MapMemory, so you should use the operator invoke instead:

-var counter: Int by memory.withDefault { 0 }
+var counter: Int by memory { 0 }

ReactiveMap -> ReactiveMutableMap

-var users by memory.reactiveMap<User>()
+var users by memory.reactiveMutableMap<String, User>()

Naming changes

Word stream in methods names replaced with implementation-specific words to make API clearer.

Coroutines:

• getStream -> getFlow and getValueFlow
• getAllStream -> valuesFlow

RxJava:

• getStream -> getValueObservable
• getAllStream -> valuesObservable

Contributing

Merge requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

License

MIT