Introduction

http-cache is a library that acts as a middleware for caching HTTP responses. It is intended to be used by other libraries to support multiple HTTP clients and backend cache managers, though it does come with multiple optional manager implementations out of the box. http-cache is built on top of http-cache-semantics which parses HTTP headers to correctly compute cacheability of responses.

Key Features

• Traditional Caching: Standard HTTP response caching with full buffering
• Streaming Support: Memory-efficient caching for large responses without full buffering
• Cache-Aware Rate Limiting: Intelligent rate limiting that only applies on cache misses, not cache hits
• Multiple Backends: Support for disk-based (cacache) and in-memory (moka, quick-cache) storage
• Client Integrations: Support for reqwest, surf, tower, and ureq HTTP clients
• RFC 7234 Compliance: Proper HTTP cache semantics with respect for cache-control headers

Streaming vs Traditional Caching

The library supports two caching approaches:

• Traditional Caching (CacheManager trait): Buffers entire responses in memory before caching. Suitable for smaller responses and simpler use cases.
• Streaming Caching (StreamingCacheManager trait): Processes responses as streams without full buffering. Ideal for large files, media content, or memory-constrained environments.