package HTTP::Cache::Transparent; use strict; our $VERSION = '1.0'; =head1 NAME HTTP::Cache::Transparent - Cache the result of http get-requests persistently. =head1 SYNOPSIS use LWP::Simple; use HTTP::Cache::Transparent; HTTP::Cache::Transparent::init( { BasePath => '/tmp/cache', } ); my $data = get( 'http://www.sn.no' ); =head1 DESCRIPTION An implementation of http get that keeps a local cache of fetched pages to avoid fetching the same data from the server if it hasn't been updated. The cache is stored on disk and is thus persistent between invocations. Uses the http-headers If-Modified-Since and ETag to let the server decide if the version in the cache is up-to-date or not. The cache is implemented by modifying the LWP::UserAgent class to seamlessly cache the result of all requests that can be cached. =head1 INITIALIZING THE CACHE HTTP::Cache::Transparent provides an init-method that sets the parameters for the cache and overloads a method in LWP::UserAgent to activate the cache.After init has been called, the normal LWP-methods (LWP::Simple as well as the more full-fledged LWP::Request methods) should be used as usual. =over 4 =cut use Carp; use LWP::UserAgent; use HTTP::Status qw/RC_NOT_MODIFIED RC_OK RC_PARTIAL_CONTENT/; use Digest::MD5 qw/md5_hex/; use IO::File; use File::Copy; use File::Path; use Cwd; # These are the response-headers that we should store in the # cache-entry and recreate when we return a cached response. my @cache_headers = qw/Content-Type Content-Encoding Content-Length Content-Range Last-Modified/; my $basepath; my $maxage; my $verbose; my $noupdate; my $approvecontent; my $org_simple_request; =item init Initialize the HTTP cache. Takes a single parameter which is a hashref containing named arguments to the object. HTTP::Cache::Transparent::init( { # Directory to store the cache in. BasePath => "/tmp/cache", # How many hours should items be kept in the cache # after they were last requested? # Default is 8*24. MaxAge => 8*24, # Print progress-messages to STDERR. # Default is 0. Verbose => 1, # If a request is made for a url that has been requested # from the server less than NoUpdate seconds ago, the # response will be generated from the cache without # contacting the server. # Default is 0. NoUpdate => 15*60, # When a url has been downloaded and the response indicates that # has been modified compared to the content in the cache, # the ApproveContent callback is called with the HTTP::Response. # The callback shall return true if the response shall be used and # stored in the cache or false if the response shall be discarded # and the response in the cache used instead. # This mechanism can be used to work around servers that return errors # intermittently. The default is to accept all responses. ApproveContent => sub { return $_[0]->is_success }, } ); The directory where the cache is stored must be writable. It must also only contain files created by HTTP::Cache::Transparent. =cut my $initialized = 0; sub init { my( $arg ) = @_; defined( $arg->{BasePath} ) or croak( "You must specify a BasePath" ); $basepath = $arg->{BasePath}; if( not -d $basepath ) { eval { mkpath($basepath) }; if ($@) { print STDERR "$basepath is not a directory and cannot be created: $@\n"; exit 1; } } # Append a trailing slash if it is missing. $basepath =~ s%([^/])$%$1/%; $maxage = $arg->{MaxAge} || 8*24; $verbose = $arg->{Verbose} || 0; $noupdate = $arg->{NoUpdate} || 0; $approvecontent = $arg->{ApproveContent} || sub { return 1; }; # Make sure that LWP::Simple does not use its simplified # get-method that bypasses LWP::UserAgent. $LWP::Simple::FULL_LWP++; unless ($initialized++) { $org_simple_request = \&LWP::UserAgent::simple_request; no warnings; *LWP::UserAgent::simple_request = \&_simple_request_cache } } =item Initializing from use-line An alternative way of initializing HTTP::Cache::Transparent is to supply parameters in the use-line. This allows you to write use HTTP::Cache::Transparent ( BasePath => '/tmp/cache' ); which is exactly equivalent to use HTTP::Cache::Transparent; HTTP::Cache::Transparent::init( BasePath => '/tmp/cache' ); The advantage to using this method is that you can do perl -MHTTP::Cache::Transparent=BasePath,/tmp/cache myscript.pl or even set the environment variable PERL5OPT PERL5OPT=-MHTTP::Cache::Transparent=BasePath,/tmp/cache myscript.pl and have all the http-requests performed by myscript.pl go through the cache without changing myscript.pl =back =cut sub import { my( $module, %args ) = @_; return if (scalar(keys(%args)) == 0); HTTP::Cache::Transparent::init( \%args ); } END { _remove_old_entries(); } sub _simple_request_cache { my($self, $r, $content_cb, $read_size_hint) = @_; my $res; if( $r->method eq "GET" and not defined( $r->header( 'If-Modified-Since' ) ) and not defined( $content_cb ) ) { print STDERR "Fetching " . $r->uri if( $verbose ); my $url = $r->uri->as_string; my $key = $url; $key .= "\n" . $r->header('Range') if defined $r->header('Range'); my $filename = $basepath . _urlhash( $url ); my $fh; my $meta; if( -s $filename ) { $fh = new IO::File "< $filename" or die "Failed to read from $filename"; $meta = _read_meta( $fh ); if( $meta->{Url} eq $url ) { $meta->{'Range'} = "" unless defined( $meta->{'Range'} ); # Check that the Range is the same for this request as # for the one in the cache. if( (not defined( $r->header( 'Range' ) ) ) or $r->header( 'Range' ) eq $meta->{'Range'} ) { $r->header( 'If-Modified-Since', $meta->{'Last-Modified'} ) if exists( $meta->{'Last-Modified'} ); $r->header( 'If-None-Match', $meta->{ETag} ) if( exists( $meta->{ETag} ) ); } } else { warn "Cache collision: $url and $meta->{Url} have the same md5sum"; } } if( defined( $meta->{'X-HCT-LastUpdated'} ) and $noupdate > (time - $meta->{'X-HCT-LastUpdated'} ) ) { print STDERR " from cache without checking with server.\n" if $verbose; $res = HTTP::Response->new( $meta->{Code} ); _get_from_cachefile( $filename, $fh, $res, $meta ); $fh->close() if defined $fh;; return $res; } $res = &$org_simple_request( $self, $r ); if( $res->code == RC_NOT_MODIFIED ) { print STDERR " from cache.\n" if( $verbose ); _get_from_cachefile( $filename, $fh, $res, $meta ); $fh->close() if defined $fh;; # We need to rewrite the cache-entry to update X-HCT-LastUpdated _write_cache_entry( $filename, $url, $r, $res ); return $res; } elsif( defined( $meta->{'X-HCT-LastUpdated'} ) and not &{$approvecontent}( $res ) ) { print STDERR " from cache since the response was not approved.\n" if( $verbose ); _get_from_cachefile( $filename, $fh, $res, $meta ); $fh->close() if defined $fh;; # Do NOT update the cache! return $res; } else { $fh->close() if defined $fh;; if( defined( $meta->{MD5} ) and md5_hex( $res->content ) eq $meta->{MD5} ) { $res->header( "X-Content-Unchanged", 1 ); print STDERR " unchanged" if( $verbose ); } print STDERR " from server.\n" if( $verbose ); _write_cache_entry( $filename, $url, $r, $res ) if( $res->code == RC_OK or $res->code == RC_PARTIAL_CONTENT ); } } else { # We won't try to cache this request. $res = &$org_simple_request( $self, $r, $content_cb, $read_size_hint ); } return $res; } sub _get_from_cachefile { my( $filename, $fh, $res, $meta ) = @_; my $content; my $buf; while ( $fh->read( $buf, 1024 ) > 0 ) { $content .= $buf; } $fh->close(); # Set last-accessed for cache-entry. my $mtime = time; utime( $mtime, $mtime, $filename ); # modify response if( $HTTP::Message::VERSION >= 1.44 ) { $res->content_ref( \$content ); } else { $res->content( $content ); } # For HTTP::Cache::Transparent earlier than 0.4, # there is no Code in the cache. if( defined( $meta->{Code} ) ) { $res->code( $meta->{Code} ); } else { $res->code( RC_OK ); } foreach my $h (@cache_headers) { $res->header( $h, $meta->{$h} ) if defined( $meta->{ $h } ); } $res->header( "X-Cached", 1 ); $res->header( "X-Content-Unchanged", 1 ); } # Read metadata and position filehandle at start of data. sub _read_meta { my( $fh ) = @_; my %meta; my( $key, $value ); do { my $line = <$fh>; ( $key, $value ) = ($line =~ /(\S+)\s+(.*)[\n\r]*/); $meta{$key} = $value if( defined $value ); } while( defined( $value ) ); return \%meta; } # Write metadata and position filehandle where data should be written. sub _write_meta { my( $fh, $meta ) = @_; foreach my $key (sort keys( %{$meta} ) ) { print $fh "$key $meta->{$key}\n"; } print $fh "\n"; } sub _write_cache_entry { my( $filename, $url, $req, $res ) = @_; my $out_filename = "$filename.tmp$$"; my $fh = new IO::File "> $out_filename" or die "Failed to write to $out_filename"; my $meta; $meta->{Url} = $url; $meta->{ETag} = $res->header('ETag') if defined( $res->header('ETag') ); $meta->{MD5} = md5_hex( $res->content ); $meta->{Range} = $req->header('Range') if defined( $req->header('Range') ); $meta->{Code} = $res->code; $meta->{'X-HCT-LastUpdated'} = time; foreach my $h (@cache_headers) { $meta->{$h} = $res->header( $h ) if defined $res->header( $h ); } _write_meta( $fh, $meta ); print $fh $res->content; $fh->close; move( $out_filename, $filename ); } sub _urlhash { my( $url ) = @_; return md5_hex( $url ); } sub _remove_old_entries { if( defined( $basepath ) and -d( $basepath ) ) { my $oldcwd = getcwd(); chdir( $basepath ); my @files = glob("*"); foreach my $file (@files) { if( $file !~ m%^[0-9a-f]{32}$% ) { print STDERR "HTTP::Cache::Transparent: Unknown file found in cache directory: $basepath$file\n"; } elsif( (-M($file))*24 > $maxage ) { print STDERR "Deleting $file.\n" if( $verbose ); unlink( $file ); } } chdir( $oldcwd ); } } =head1 INSPECTING CACHE BEHAVIOR The HTTP::Cache::Transparent inserts two special headers in the HTTP::Response object. These can be accessed via the HTTP::Response::header()-method. =over 4 =item X-Cached This header is inserted and set to 1 if the response is delivered from the cache instead of from the server. =item X-Content-Unchanged This header is inserted and set to 1 if the content returned is the same as the content returned the last time this url was fetched. This header is always inserted and set to 1 when the response is delivered from the cache. =back =head1 LIMITATIONS This module has a number of limitations that you should be aware of before using it. =over 4 =item - There is no upper limit to how much diskspace the cache requires. The only limiting mechanism is that data for urls that haven't been requested in the last MaxAge hours will be removed from the cache the next time the program exits. =item - Currently, only get-requests that store the result in memory (i.e. do not use the option to have the result stored directly in a file or delivered via a callback) is cached. I intend to remove this limitation in a future version. =item - The support for Ranges is a bit primitive. It creates a new object in the cache for each unique combination of url and range. This will work ok as long as you always request the same range(s) for a url. =item - The cache doesn't properly check and store all headers in the HTTP request and response. Therefore, if you request the same url repeatedly with different sets of headers (cookies, accept-encoding etc), and these headers affect the response from the server, the cache may return the wrong response. =back =head1 CACHE FORMAT The cache is stored on disk as one file per cached object. The filename is equal to the md5sum of the url and the Range-header if it exists. The file contains a set of key/value-pairs with metadata (one entry per line) followed by a blank line and then the actual data returned by the server. The last modified date of the cache file is set to the time when the cache object was last requested by a user. =head1 AUTHOR Mattias Holmlund, E$firstname -at- $lastname -dot- seE L =head1 GIT REPOSITORY A git repository containing the source for this module can be found via http://git.holmlund.se/ =head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE Copyright (C) 2004-2007 by Mattias Holmlund This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.4 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available. =cut 1;