Memoise decorator

An ES7 decorator for memoising (caching) a method's response

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Table of Contents

• Installation
• Polyfills Required
• Compatibility
• Usage
  • Basic Usage
  • Custom Cache Key Generator
  • Using Instance Methods as Cache Key Generators
    • Typescript
    • Babel
  • Memoising all method calls disregarding parameters
  • Direct access to the cache map

Installation

npm install @aloreljs/memoise-decorator

Polyfills Required

Symbol construction via Symbol('someName') & Maps must be available.

Compatibility

• Typescript - full
• Spec-compliant decorator proposal - full
• Babel (current proposal) - full
• Babel (legacy) - full

Usage

Basic Usage

import {Memoise} from '@aloreljs/memoise-decorator';

class MyClass {
  @Memoise()
  someMethod(a, b, c) {
  }
  
  @Memoise()
  static someStaticMethod(a, b, c) {
  }
}

Custom Cache Key Generator

The decorator uses JSON.stringify on the method arguments to generate a cache key by default, which should work for most scenarios, but can be inefficient or unusable in others. You can replace it by passing your own cache key generator to the decorator function. It will be called with the class instance as an argument.

The function can return anything that's uniquely identifiable in a Map.

import {Memoise} from '@aloreljs/memoise-decorator';

class MyClass {
  constructor() {
    this.someId = 'foo';
  }
  
  @Memoise(function(label, data) {
    return `${this.someId}:${label}:${data.id}`
  })
  someMethod(label, data) {
  }
}

Using Instance Methods as Cache Key Generators

The cache generator function gets called with fn.apply(instance, methodArguments) and therefore can access instance data. The syntax is a bit different for Typescript and Babel.

Typescript

Decorators get applied after your class is already established, therefore the syntax is simple

import {Memoise} from '@aloreljs/memoise-decorator';

class MyClass {
  public readonly multiplier = 5;
  
  @Memoise(MyClass.prototype.serialiser)
  public method(num: number): string {
    return `The number is ${num}`;
  }
  
  private serialiser(num: number): number {
    return num * this.multiplier;
  }
}

Babel

Decorators get applied as part of the class definition, therefore you need to wrap the cache key generator:

import {Memoise} from '@aloreljs/memoise-decorator';

class MyClass {
  constructor() {
    this.multiplier = 5;
  }
  
  @Memoise(function() { // Arrow functions will not work
    return MyClass.prototype.serialiser.apply(this, arguments);
  })
  method(num) {
    return `The number is ${num}`;
  }
  
  serialiser(num) {
    return num * this.multiplier;
  }
}

Memoising all method calls disregarding parameters

This might be useful for methods that don't accept parameters in the first place.

import {Memoise} from '@aloreljs/memoise-decorator';

class MyClass {
  @Memoise.all()
  method() {
    return 'foo';
  }
}

Direct access to the cache map

After being called at least once, the method will get a MEMOISE_CACHE property containing the cache.

import {MEMOISE_CACHE, Memoise} from '@aloreljs/memoise-decorator';

class MyClass {
  @Memoise()
  method(a) {
    return a + 10;
  }
}
const instance = new MyClass();
console.log(instance.method[MEMOISE_CACHE]); // Undefined
instance.method(instance.method(1));
console.log(instance.method[MEMOISE_CACHE]); // Map([['[1]', 11]])