I've been working on the business and data layers for a web system and, as you might expect, I've been making quite a bit of use of ASP.NET's caching system. Now, to test the business layer, I had gone ahead and set up a non-ASP.NET caching system as well using my standard method for caching in Windows applications, a static hashtable with strongly typed string keys (works well, fairly compatible with the ASP.NET cache so it is easy to move code between the two models) but then I realized that I could just use the ASP.NET cache even when my code was being used from a Windows Forms applications (for my class libraries, where I don't know what type of interface is being used) and it works just fine.


Shared Function GetValueFromCache( _
        ByVal key As String) As Object
    Dim myContext As HttpContext
    myContext = HttpContext.Current

    If myContext Is Nothing Then
        Return HttpRuntime.Cache.Get(key)
    Else
        Return myContext.Cache.Get(key)
    End If
End Function

Shared Sub PlaceValueIntoCache( _
    ByVal key As String, _
    ByVal item As Object, _
    ByVal cacheDuration As Integer)
    Dim myContext As HttpContext
    myContext = HttpContext.Current
    Dim myCache As Caching.Cache

    If myContext Is Nothing Then
        myCache = HttpRuntime.Cache
    Else
        myCache = myContext.Cache
    End If

    myCache.Insert(key, item, Nothing, _
    Now.AddSeconds(cacheDuration), _
    Caching.Cache.NoSlidingExpiration)
End Sub


This might be common knowledge, but I have been handling my own non-ASP.NET caching all on my own, and this just makes it too easy. In fact, it makes it so easy that I started thinking of ways to perform even more caching in some of my Windows Forms applications... I can see many performance gains in my future!