5 Caching Drupal Content in Node.js

Outline

• Redis
• Cache concepts
• Activities

Redis

Redis is an open source, BSD licensed, advanced key-value cache and store. It is often referred to as a data structure server since keys can contain strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, bitmaps and hyperloglogs.

Redis

Cache concepts

• Cache everything.
• Have a standardized method for creating keys.
• Figure out early on if you want to cache an item.
• Redis gives you a few ways to make this happen.
  • Hashes
    • Known data structure
    • Only get/set what you need (this is something you have to figure out)
    • Slow
  • Strings
    • Serialize & De-serialize on each request.

Always check your cache. Drupal is slow, and you’ll want to avoid making a network round-trip if you can.

Take advantage of multi-get. This prevents us from making multiple round-trips to Redis. This is especially important if Redis is not physically located near your front-end.

client.mget(['my-key', 'my-second-key'], function (err, data) {
  console.log(err, data);
})

Activities

Requesting Data from Drupal

Require some new libraries we’ll need for these activities.

• Copy app.default.js to app.js
• Require redis, request, and crypto.
• Create a redis client, client = redis.createClient();

---

Install necessary modules npm --save adaro express redis crypto request

var express = require('express'),
      path = require('path'),
      adaro = require('adaro'),
      redis = require('redis'),
      request = require('request'),
      crypto = require('crypto'),
      client = redis.createClient(),
      app = express();

• Create a route that listens on /posts route.
• Request data from Drupal

app.get('/posts', function (req, res) {
  request({
    url: 'http://USERNAME.drupal.dcbarcelona.4kclass.com:8080/api/v1.2/articles',
    json: true
  }, function (error, response, body) {
    return res.send(body);
  });
});

Visit http://USERNAME.drupal.headless.dcbarcelona.4kclass.com:PORT/posts

Every time someone makes a request for the /posts route, an external data source will be fetched. The request() function takes two parameters, an object with some options, and a callback; in the call back is where you can return the data.

• url is our remote environment
• json lets request know that our response is JSON and it should automatically parse the response.

For the callback function you get three variables, error, response, body.

Cache Drupal Response

Store the remote url and our cacheKey as variables so they can be reused. Make sure these variables are declared within the app.get() callback.

var remote = 'http://USERNAME.drupal.dcbarcelona.4kclass.com:8080/api/v1.2/articles',
    cacheKey = crypto.createHash('sha1').update(req.url + process.env.PORT).digest('hex');

• Change the url option of request to be the remote variable.

Your cacheKey is a sha1 hash of the request URL and the port (combined). This is something that should be unique to each request, otherwise you might accidentally return incorrect data.

Now, request the data at the specific key we just created. This should be included within the app.get() callback. With just this you’ll only see null, null in the console; we haven’t yet set the cache key.

client.get(cacheKey, function (err, reply) {
  console.log(err, reply)
});

We only want to make requests to Drupal if there is nothing in our cache.

Every HTTP request you have to make will slow down your application. Speed matters. Cache everything!

---

client.get(cacheKey, function (err, reply) {
  if (reply !== null) {
    return res.send(reply);
  }
  else {
    request({
      url: remote,
      json: true
    }, function (error, response, body) {
      return res.send(body);
    });
  }
});

In this instance we’re only making a request to Drupal if the reply from Redis was null.

We can use the .set() method from the node-redis library to save the response from Drupal in Redis.

client.set(key, value, function (err, reply) {
  // DO STUFF
});

• Use client.set() to store the response from Drupal in Redis.
• Ensure the JSON is stored as a string in Redis, and parsed when returned.

---

client.get(cacheKey, function (err, reply) {
  if (reply !== null) {
    return res.send(JSON.parse(reply));
  }
  else {
    request({
      url: remote,
      json: true
    }, function (error, response, body) {
      client.set(cacheKey, JSON.stringify(body), function (err, reply) {
        return res.send(body);
      });
    });
  }
});

Even More Advanced

• Use a multi object to set cached data at it’s ttl.
• Create a dust template to render this data.
• Create an optional route parameter to filter all posts by their id
  • Change the template for this single post.