P5-cache-againstfile

Cache data structures parsed from files, watching for updates

A module that caches a data structure against a filename, statting the file to determine whether it has changed and needs to be re-parsed. You supply a routine to generate the data structure given the filename.

This module is recommended for files which change infrequently but are read often, especially if they are expensive to parse.

This approach has the advantage over lazy caching that multiple processes holding a cache will all update at the same time so you will not get inconsistent results if you request data from different processes.

The module itself is simply a factory for various backend modules. The distribution includes backends for in-memory caching or file caching using Storable, plus an adaptor to use any modules offering the Cache or CacheCache interfaces as the cache implementation.

Data structures are automatically serialised/deserialised by the backend modules if they are being persisted somewhere other than in memory e.g. on the filesystem.