Forum OpenACS Development: Why is empty string allowed for cache_key in the DB API?

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1: Why is empty string allowed for cache_key in the DB API?
Posted by Andrew Piskorski on 10/03/24 09:12 PM
The caching facilities of the OpenACS DB API are very helpful. But one little thing confuses me. In db_multirow and the rest of the DB API, empty string is allowed for cache_key, and results in the query being cached!

That surprises me. I think it would be more natural and useful if passing in -cache_key {} turned caching off.

Is this something anyone would consider changing in a future version, or is that too much breaking of backwards compatibility?

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2: Re: Why is empty string allowed for cache_key in the DB API? (response to 1)
Posted by Gustaf Neumann on 10/19/24 12:45 PM

The semantics are implemented such when a -cache_key is provided, the caching is performed, otherwise not. AFIKT, the same logic is implemented not only for db_multirow, but as well for the other db_* calls. Btw, providing an empty string for turning something off does not sound right to me.