Speeding Up Your Website Using Fastify and Redis Cache

const isCacheableRequest = (request: FastifyRequest): boolean => {
  // Do not attempt to use cache for authenticated visitors.
  if (request.visitor?.userAccount) {
    return false;
  }

  if (request.method !== 'GET') {
    return false;
  }

  // We only want to cache responses under /supplements/.
  if (!request.url.includes('/supplements/')) {
    return false;
  }

  // We provide a mechanism to bypass the cache.
  // This is necessary for implementing the "Serve Stale Content While Revalidating" feature.
  if (request.headers['cache-control'] === 'no-cache') {
    return false;
  }

  return true;
};

const isCacheableResponse = (reply: FastifyReply): boolean => {
  if (reply.statusCode !== 200) {
    return false;
  }

  // We don't want to cache responses that are served from the cache.
  if (reply.getHeader('x-pillser-cache') === 'HIT') {
    return false;
  }

  // We only want to cache responses that are HTML.
  if (!reply.getHeader('content-type')?.toString().includes('text/html')) {
    return false;
  }

  return true;
};

const generateRequestCacheKey = (request: FastifyRequest): string => {
  // We need to namespace the cache key to allow an easy purging of all the cache entries.
  return 'request:' + generateHash({
    algorithm: 'sha256',
    buffer: stringifyJson({
      method: request.method,
      url: request.url,
      // This is used to cache viewport specific responses.
      viewportWidth: request.viewportWidth,
    }),
    encoding: 'hex',
  });
};

type CachedResponse = {
  body: string;
  headers: Record<string, string>;
  statusCode: number;
};

const refreshRequestCache = async (request: FastifyRequest) => {
  await got({
    headers: {
      'cache-control': 'no-cache',
      'sec-ch-viewport-width': String(request.viewportWidth),
      'user-agent': request.headers['user-agent'],
    },
    method: 'GET',
    url: pathToAbsoluteUrl(request.originalUrl),
  });
};

app.addHook('onRequest', async (request, reply) => {
  if (!isCacheableRequest(request)) {
    return;
  }

  const cachedResponse = await redis.get(generateRequestCacheKey(request));

  if (!cachedResponse) {
    return;
  }

  reply.header('x-pillser-cache', 'HIT');

  const response: CachedResponse = parseJson(cachedResponse);

  reply.status(response.statusCode);
  reply.headers(response.headers);
  reply.send(response.body);
  reply.hijack();

  setImmediate(() => {
    // After the response is sent, we send a request to refresh the cache in the background.
    // This effectively serves stale content while revalidating.
    // Therefore, this cache does not reduce the number of requests to the origin;
    // The goal is to reduce the response time for the user.
    refreshRequestCache(request);
  });
});

const readableToString = (readable: Readable): Promise<string> => {
  const chunks: Uint8Array[] = [];

  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    readable.on('data', (chunk) => chunks.push(Buffer.from(chunk)));
    readable.on('error', (err) => reject(err));
    readable.on('end', () => resolve(Buffer.concat(chunks).toString('utf8')));
  });
};

app.addHook('onSend', async (request, reply, payload) => {
  if (reply.hasHeader('x-pillser-cache')) {
    return payload;
  }

  if (!isCacheableRequest(request) || !isCacheableResponse(reply) || !(payload instanceof Readable)) {
    // Indicate that the response is not cacheable.
    reply.header('x-pillser-cache', 'DYNAMIC');

    return payload;
  }

  const content = await readableToString(payload);

  const headers = omit(reply.getHeaders(), [
    'content-length',
    'set-cookie',
    'x-pillser-cache',
  ]) as Record<string, string>;

  reply.header('x-pillser-cache', 'MISS');

  await redis.setex(
    generateRequestCacheKey(request),
    getDuration('1 day', 'seconds'),
    stringifyJson({
      body: content,
      headers,
      statusCode: reply.statusCode,
    } satisfies CachedResponse),
  );

  return content;
});