Overview¶
The TTLMap is a thread-safe dictionary with time-to-live (TTL) and max-size support. It can be used as a simple in-memory cache.
Key features¶
Simple - The TTLMap derives MutableMapping and implements the same interface as the built-in dict class. It can be used as a drop-in replacement for dict.
Efficient - The TTLMap is designed to be efficient in terms of both time and space complexity.
Thread-safe - The TTLMap is thread-safe. It can be used in multi-threaded applications without any additional synchronization.
Lazy - The TTLMap is lazy. It does not spawn any additional threads or processes. Computing the time-to-live is done only when the TTLMap is accessed.
Zero dependencies - The TTLMap has no dependencies other than the Python standard library.
LRU support - The TTLMap supports LRU (least recently used) eviction policy. It can be configured to evict either the last set item or the least recently accessed item.
Restrictions¶
The TTLMap is designed to be lazy and thread-safe in case when it is accessed only by one key. The trade-off is that iteration over the TTLMap is not thread-safe and does not guarantee that the item will be accessible after it is returned by the iterator.