Optimizing the Space and Time Matrix

The following method comes from the nopCommerce project. Take a moment to read it.

public virtual string GetResource(string resourceKey, int languageId,
    bool logIfNotFound = true, string defaultValue = "", bool returnEmptyIfNotFound = false)
{
    string result = string.Empty;
    if (resourceKey == null)
        resourceKey = string.Empty;
    resourceKey = resourceKey.Trim().ToLowerInvariant();
    if (_localizationSettings.LoadAllLocaleRecordsOnStartup)
    {
        //load all records (we know they are cached)
        var resources = GetAllResourceValues(languageId);
        if (resources.ContainsKey(resourceKey))
        {
            result = resources[resourceKey].Value;
        }
    }
    else
    {
        //gradual loading
        string key = string.Format(LOCALSTRINGRESOURCES_BY_RESOURCENAME_KEY, languageId, resourceKey);
        string lsr = _cacheManager.Get(key, () =>
        {
            var query = from l in _lsrRepository.Table
                        where l.ResourceName == resourceKey
                        && l.LanguageId == languageId
                        select l.ResourceValue;
            return query.FirstOrDefault();
        });

        if (lsr != null) 
            result = lsr;
    }
    if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(result))
    {
        if (logIfNotFound)
            _logger.Warning(string.Format("Resource string ({0}) is not found. Language ID = {1}", resourceKey, languageId));
        
        if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(defaultValue))
        {
            result = defaultValue;
        }
        else
        {
            if (!returnEmptyIfNotFound)
                result = resourceKey;
        }
    }
    return result;
}

I am guessing, but I am assuming that the intent here is to have a tradeoff between startup time and the system responsiveness. If you have LoadAllLocaleRecordsOnStartup set to true, it will load all the data from the database, and access it from there. Otherwise, it will load the data in a piece at a time.

That is nice, but it shows a single tradeoff, and that isn’t a really good idea. Not only that, but look how it uses the cache. There are separate entries in the cache for the resources if they are loaded via the GetAllResourceValues() vs. individually. That leaves the cache with a lot less options when it needs to clear the cache. The cache deciding that it can remove a single item would result in a very expensive and long query taking place.

Instead, we can do it like this:

public class LocalizationService
{
    MyEntities _ctx;
    Cache _cache;

    public LocalizationService(MyEntities ctx, Cache cache)
    {
        _ctx = ctx;
        _cache = cache;
        Task.Run(() =>
        {
            foreach(var item in _ctx.Resources)
            {
                _cache.Set(item.Key + "/" + item.LanguageId, item.Text);
            }
        });
    }    

    public string Get(string key, string languageId)
    {
        var cacheKey = key +"/" + languageId;
        var item = _cache.Get(cacheKey);
        if(item != null)
            return item;

        item = _ctx.Resources.Where(x=>x.Key == key && x.LanguageId == languageId).SingleOrDefault();
        _cache.Set(cacheKey, item);
        return item;
    }
}

Of course, this has a separate issue, but I’ll discuss that in my next post.