Gfrktyl

I've written a generic data adapter that can make use of a cache, for use in a data access layer. It presents an interface allowing CRUD operations, as well as retrieving all objects of a certain type.

IEntity.cs:

using System;



namespace GenericDataAdapter

{

    public interface IEntity

    {

        Guid Id { get; set; }

    }

}

IDataAdapter.cs:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Threading.Tasks;



namespace GenericDataAdapter

{

    public interface IDataAdapter<T> where T : IEntity

    {

        Task<IEnumerable<T>> ReadAllAsync();

        Task<(bool, T)> ReadAsync(Guid id);    // bool indicates whether entity was present in data source

        Task SaveAsync(T newData);  // update if present, create if not present

        Task DeleteAsync(Guid id);

    }

}

CacheDataAdapter.cs:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Threading.Tasks;



namespace GenericDataAdapter

{

    public class CacheDataAdapter<T> : IDataAdapter<T> where T : IEntity

    {

        private IDataAdapter<T> PrimaryDataSource;

        private IDataAdapter<T> Cache;



        public CacheDataAdapter(IDataAdapter<T> primaryDataSource, IDataAdapter<T> cache)

        {

            PrimaryDataSource = primaryDataSource;

            Cache = cache;

        }



        public Task<IEnumerable<T>> ReadAllAsync()

        {

            return PrimaryDataSource.ReadAllAsync();

        }



        // can potentially return stale data, due to SaveAsync()/DeleteAsync() not being atomic

        public async Task<(bool, T)> ReadAsync(Guid id)

        {

            var (presentInCache, cacheData) = await Cache.ReadAsync(id);

            if (presentInCache)

            {

                return (true, cacheData);

            }



            var (presentInPrimary, primaryData) = await PrimaryDataSource.ReadAsync(id);

            if (presentInPrimary)

            {

                await Cache.SaveAsync(primaryData);

                return (true, primaryData);

            }

            else

            {

                return (false, default(T));

            }

        }



        public async Task SaveAsync(T newData)

        {

            await Cache.SaveAsync(newData);

            await PrimaryDataSource.SaveAsync(newData);

        }



        public async Task DeleteAsync(Guid id)

        {

            await Cache.DeleteAsync(id);

            await PrimaryDataSource.DeleteAsync(id);

        }        

    }

}

There are two points I'd like feedback on, though all comments are welcome:

• In CacheDataAdapter.ReadAllAsync(), should I use await? It doesn't seem like I should, since I'm just passing through the return value of PrimaryDataSource.ReadAllAsync(), but I'm not sure.


• I'm not sure whether unifying the create and update operations into SaveAsync() is a good idea; it puts the responsibility for fully initializing objects on the application. That's why I'm using GUIDs as the identifier, so the application can generate unique IDs without having to consult the database first.

Typically this scenario is done with a decorator pattern where you would wrap just the one and have the cache functionality in the one class. You would put the code in the CacheDataAdapter that I assume is currently in the code of the IDataAdapter cache. Most of the time this will simplify your code as you can call base method to get the values if not in the backing store for the cache.

For example if you are using the ConcurrentDictionary or MemoryCache they will have methods to GetOrCreate or AddOrUpdate that will take a lamba expression that you can call into your base method to get the value if missing. Since you are doing async work while caching you should check out the AsyncLazy

If you don't want to do the decorator pattern I would swap Save and Delete to do it in the primary store before removing them from the cache. You could have a situation where the save fails in the primary but your cache is updated to say it's good.

As far if you should await the ReadAllAsync or not it doesn't matter a lot. I personally wouldn't await it but either way is fine. See answer on SO