Rails Brotli Cache

This gem enables support for compressing Ruby on Rails cache entries using the Brotli compression algorithm. RailsBrotliCache::Store offers better compression and performance compared to the default Rails.cache Gzip, regardless of the underlying data store. The gem also allows specifying any custom compression algorithm instead of Brotli.

You can check out this blog post describing the gem in more detail.

Installation

Gemfile

  gem 'brotli' # an optional dependency, other compressors are supported
  gem 'rails-brotli-cache'

Benchmarks

Brotli cache works as a proxy layer wrapping the standard cache data store. It applies Brotli compression instead of the default Gzip before storing cache entries.

redis_cache = ActiveSupport::Cache::RedisCacheStore.new(
  url: "redis://localhost:6379"
)
brotli_redis_cache = RailsBrotliCache::Store.new(redis_cache)

~25% better compression of a sample JSON object:

json = File.read("sample.json") # sample 435kb JSON text
json.size # => 435662
redis_cache.write("json", json)
brotli_redis_cache.write("json", json)

## Check the size of cache entries stored in Redis
redis = Redis.new(url: "redis://localhost:6379")
redis.get("json").size # => 31698 ~31kb
redis.get("br-json").size # => 24058 ~24kb

~20% better compression of a sample ActiveRecord objects array:

users = User.limit(100).to_a # 100 ActiveRecord objects
redis_cache.write("users", users)
brotli_redis_cache.write("users", users)

redis.get("users").size # => 12331 ~12kb
redis.get("br-users").size # => 10299 ~10kb

~25% faster performance for reading/writing a larger JSON file:

json = File.read("sample.json") # sample ~1mb JSON text

Benchmark.bm do |x|
  x.report("redis_cache") do
    100.times do
      redis_cache.write("test", json)
      redis_cache.read("test")
    end
  end

  x.report("brotli_redis_cache") do
    100.times do
      brotli_redis_cache.write("test", json)
      brotli_redis_cache.read("test")
    end
  end

  # ...
end

# redis_cache  1.782225   0.049936   1.832161 (  2.523317)
# brotli_redis_cache  1.218365   0.051084   1.269449 (  1.850894)
# memcached_cache  1.766268   0.045351   1.811619 (  2.504233)
# brotli_memcached_cache  1.194646   0.051750   1.246396 (  1.752982)
# file_cache  1.727967   0.071138   1.799105 (  1.799229)
# brotli_file_cache  1.128514   0.044308   1.172822 (  1.172983)

Regardless of the underlying data store, Brotli cache offers 20%-40% performance improvement.

You can run the benchmarks by executing:

cp docker-compose.yml.sample docker-compose.yml
docker compose up -d
cd benchmarks
bundle install
bundle exec ruby main.rb

Configuration

Gem works as a drop-in replacement for a standard Rails cache store. You can configure it with different store types:

config.cache_store = RailsBrotliCache::Store.new(
  ActiveSupport::Cache::RedisCacheStore.new(url: "redis://localhost:6379")
)

config.cache_store = RailsBrotliCache::Store.new(
  ActiveSupport::Cache::MemCacheStore.new("localhost:11211")
)

config.cache_store = RailsBrotliCache::Store.new(
  ActiveSupport::Cache::FileStore.new('/tmp')
)

You should avoid using it with ActiveSupport::Cache::MemoryStore. This type of cache store does not serialize or compress objects but keeps them directly in the RAM. In this case, adding this gem would reduce RAM usage but add huge performance overhead.

Gem appends br- to the cache key names to prevent conflicts with previously saved entries. You can disable this behavior by passing { prefix: nil } during initialization:

config.cache_store = RailsBrotliCache::Store.new(
  ActiveSupport::Cache::RedisCacheStore.new,
  { prefix: nil }
)

Addition of the prefix means that you can safely add the Brotli the cache config and avoid compression algorithm conflicts between old and new entries. After configuring the Brotli cache you should run Rails.cache.clear to remove the outdated (gzipped) entries.

Use a custom compressor class

By default gem uses a Brotli compression, but you can customize the algorithm. You can pass a compressor_class object as a store configuration argument or directly to read/write/fetch methods:

config.cache_store = RailsBrotliCache::Store.new(
  ActiveSupport::Cache::RedisCacheStore.new,
  { compressor_class: ZSTDCompressor }
)

class ZSTDCompressor
  def self.deflate(payload)
    ::Zstd.compress(payload, level: 10)
  end

  def self.inflate(payload)
    ::Zstd.decompress(payload)
  end
end

Rails.cache.write('test-key', json, compressor_class: ZSTDCompressor)

This config expects a class that defines two methods, inflate and deflate. It allows to use, for example, a ZSTD by Facebook, offering even better performance and compression.

Testing

cp docker-compose.yml.sample docker-compose.yml
docker compose up -d
rake test_all