Hazelcast JCache Setup and Configuration Example JCache Application

Before moving on to configuration, let's have a look at a basic introductory example. The following code shows how to use the Hazelcast JCache integration inside an application in an easy but typesafe way.

// Retrieve the CachingProvider which is automatically backed by
// the chosen Hazelcast member or client provider
CachingProvider cachingProvider = Caching.getCachingProvider();

// Create a CacheManager
CacheManager cacheManager = cachingProvider.getCacheManager();

// Create a simple but typesafe configuration for the cache
CompleteConfiguration<String, String> config =
    new MutableConfiguration<String, String>()
        .setTypes( String.class, String.class );

// Create and get the cache
Cache<String, String> cache = cacheManager.createCache( "example", config );
// Alternatively to request an already existing cache
// Cache<String, String> cache = cacheManager
//     .getCache( name, String.class, String.class );

// Put a value into the cache
cache.put( "world", "Hello World" );

// Retrieve the value again from the cache
String value = cache.get( "world" );

// Print the value 'Hello World'
System.out.println( value );

Although the example is simple, let's go through the code lines one by one.

Getting the Hazelcast JCache Implementation

First of all, we retrieve the javax.cache.spi.CachingProvider using the static method from javax.cache.Caching:: getCachingManager, which automatically picks up Hazelcast as the underlying JCache implementation, if available in the classpath. This way, the Hazelcast implementation of a CachingProvider will automatically start a new Hazelcast member or client (depending on the chosen provider type) and pick up the configuration from either the command line parameter or from the classpath. We will show how to use an existing HazelcastInstance later in this chapter; for now, we keep it simple.

Setting up the JCache Entry Point

In the next line, we ask the CachingProvider to return a javax.cache.CacheManager. This is the general application's entry point into JCache. The CachingProvider creates and manages named caches.

Configuring the Cache Before Creating It

The next few lines create a simple javax.cache.configuration.MutableConfiguration to configure the cache before actually creating it. In this case, we only configure the key and value types to make the cache typesafe which is highly recommended and checked on retrieval of the cache.

Creating the Cache

To create the cache, we call javax.cache.CacheManager::createCache with a name for the cache and the previously created configuration; the call returns the created cache. If you need to retrieve a previously created cache, you can use the corresponding method overload javax.cache.CacheManager::getCache. If the cache was created using type parameters, you must retrieve the cache afterward using the type checking version of getCache.

get, put, and getAndPut

The following lines are simple put and get calls from the java.util.Map interface. The javax.cache.Cache::put has a void return type and does not return the previously assigned value of the key. To imitate the java.util.Map::put method, the JCache cache has a method called getAndPut.