SciQLop Cache

A fast, persistent, process-safe key-value cache for Python (with a C++20 core).

Think of it as a tiny local database for expensive-to-recompute things: you store Python objects under string keys, and any thread or process on the machine can read them back — safely, even at the same time. It stays flat from 100 to 1M+ entries, is 2x faster than diskcache on writes and up to 6x faster in batched transactions, and it never corrupts your data when processes crash, fork, or race each other.

pip install pysciqlop-cache

from pysciqlop_cache import Cache

cache = Cache("/tmp/my-cache")
cache["sensor/temperature"] = {"ts": 1710000000, "values": [21.3, 21.5, 21.4]}

print(cache["sensor/temperature"])
# {'ts': 1710000000, 'values': [21.3, 21.5, 21.4]}

Any picklable Python object works out of the box.

Why use it?

• Persistent — data survives process restarts; open the same directory and it's all there.
• Safe to share — multiple threads and multiple processes (including forked worker pools) can hit the same cache concurrently. No corruption, no lock files, no setup.
• Bounded — optional size limit with automatic LRU eviction, optional per-key expiration, and tag-based bulk eviction.
• Fast — small values live inside SQLite; large values are memory-mapped files, so reading a 100 MB array costs ~zero copies.
• Self-healing — crashes, races and interrupted writes are detected and repaired automatically or via cache.check(fix=True).

The 5-minute tour

It behaves like a dict

cache["key"] = value        # set
value = cache["key"]        # get, raises KeyError if missing
value = cache.get("key")    # get, None if missing
del cache["key"]            # delete, raises KeyError if missing
"key" in cache              # exists
for key in cache: ...       # iterate keys
len(cache)                  # entry count

cache.close() works, for diskcache-style cleanup code — but it isn't required, since the cache closes itself automatically when garbage-collected. Note that closing is a real, one-way shutdown here (unlike diskcache, where it's a cheap per-thread reconnect), so with cache: does not call it — using the cache after an explicit close() raises RuntimeError.

Expiration and tags

cache.set("session/abc", token, expire=3600)        # expires in 1 hour
cache.set("sensor/temp", data, tag="sensor")        # tagged entry
cache.set("sensor/hum", data, expire=600, tag="sensor")

cache.evict_tag("sensor")   # bulk-remove all "sensor" entries
cache.touch("session/abc", expire=3600)             # extend lifetime
cache.touch("session/abc")                          # drop the expiration

Bounded caches (LRU eviction)

cache = Cache("/tmp/bounded", max_size=1_000_000_000)   # 1 GB limit
# least-recently-used entries are evicted automatically in the background

Memoization — cache function results in one line

@cache.memoize(expire=300, tag="compute")
def expensive(x, y):
    return heavy_computation(x, y)

expensive(1, 2)   # computed
expensive(1, 2)   # served from cache

Keys are derived from the function's module + qualified name and a SHA-256 of the serialized arguments. Use typed=True to distinguish f(1) from f(1.0), and version_aware=True to automatically invalidate entries when the function's bytecode changes.

Atomic counters and transactions

cache.incr("page_views")              # 1
cache.incr("page_views", delta=5)     # 6
cache.decr("page_views")              # 5

with cache.transact():
    cache["balance"] = cache.get("balance", 0) - amount
    cache["log"] = f"withdrew {amount}"
# commits on success, rolls back on exception — reentrant, so
# transactional helpers nest cleanly

Cross-process locks

with cache.lock("my-resource", expire=30):
    do_work()   # exclusive across processes and threads

Heavy concurrent writers: FanoutCache

A single SQLite store serializes writers. If many processes write heavily, shard the keyspace across N independent stores:

from pysciqlop_cache import FanoutCache

cache = FanoutCache("/tmp/sharded", shard_count=8, max_size=1_000_000_000)
cache["key"] = "value"                 # routed to shard hash(key) % 8

with cache.transact("key"):            # transaction scoped to key's shard
    cache["key"] = transform(cache["key"])

A lightweight store: Index

Index / FanoutIndex are the same storage engine without expiration, eviction, tags or stats — less per-write overhead when you just need a persistent dict:

from pysciqlop_cache import Index

idx = Index("/tmp/my-index")
idx["dataset/v2"] = metadata

Observability and maintenance

cache.stats()                  # {"hits": 1, "misses": 1}
cache.volume()                 # total bytes on disk (DB + blob files)
cache.size()                   # bytes of stored values only

result = cache.check()         # verify structural integrity
result = cache.check(True)     # ... and repair (orphaned files, counter drift)
print(result.ok, result.orphaned_files, result.dangling_rows)

Serializers

Pickle is the default (any Python object). For structured data, msgspec is faster and safer:

from pysciqlop_cache import Cache, MsgspecSerializer

cache = Cache("/tmp/my-cache", serializer=MsgspecSerializer())

The serializer choice is recorded in the cache itself: reopening a cache with a different serializer raises instead of silently misreading your data.

Migrating from diskcache

# Migrate an existing diskcache Cache or FanoutCache (auto-detected)
python -m pysciqlop_cache.migrate /old/diskcache /new/sciqlop-cache

# Migrate a diskcache Index
python -m pysciqlop_cache.migrate --type index /old/index /new/index

# Migrate and delete entries from source as they are copied
python -m pysciqlop_cache.migrate --drop /old/diskcache /new/sciqlop-cache

Preserves expiration TTLs and tags. Also usable as a library:

from pysciqlop_cache.migrate import migrate
result = migrate("/old/cache", "/new/cache", drop=True)
print(result)  # {"migrated": 1234, "skipped": 0, "errors": 0, "elapsed_secs": 1.5}

diskcache compatibility

Keys

Any hashable key works, not just strings — int, float, bytes, tuple, frozenset, bool, ... str keys are stored verbatim; other types go through an internal typed encoding, transparently decoded back by keys() and iteration. bool keys store as int (True and 1 are the same key), like diskcache. A str key starting with "\x00" is reserved.

cache[("sensor", "temp")] = 21.3
cache[42] = "answer"

retry=

retry= is accepted on every method (set, get, add, delete, pop, incr, decr, touch, expire, evict, clear, check, transact, ...) and ignored: the C++ core already blocks up to timeout on a busy database, so there's no fail-silently-and-retry mode to opt into.

get() / pop() with metadata

cache.get("k", expire_time=True)              # (value, expire_time)
cache.get("k", tag=True)                      # (value, tag)
cache.get("k", expire_time=True, tag=True)    # (value, expire_time, tag)
cache.pop("k", tag=True)                      # same tuple shapes as get()

read=True (diskcache's file-handle mode) raises NotImplementedError. set() returns True, like diskcache.

Constructors

Cache(directory="/tmp/c", size_limit=1_000_000_000, timeout=30)
FanoutCache(directory="/tmp/c", shards=8, size_limit=1_000_000_000, timeout=30)
Index("/tmp/i", {"a": 1}, b=2)             # seed from mappings/items, like diskcache

directory / size_limit / shards / timeout are diskcache-style aliases for cache_path / max_size / shard_count; timeout is the SQLite busy timeout in seconds (default 600). diskcache's tuning kwargs (statistics, tag_index, eviction_policy, cull_limit, sqlite_*, disk_*) are accepted and ignored. disk= is rejected — use serializer= instead.

Index / FanoutIndex as a MutableMapping

Index and FanoutIndex implement collections.abc.MutableMapping: items(), values(), update(), setdefault(), popitem(), peekitem() all work. peekitem() / popitem() iterate in key order, not insertion order (diskcache uses insertion order).

KeyError semantics

cache["missing"]        # raises KeyError
del cache["missing"]    # raises KeyError
index.pop("missing")    # raises KeyError, unless a default is given
cache.pop("missing")    # returns None, like diskcache (no default needed)

Timeout

pysciqlop_cache.Timeout (a RuntimeError subclass) is raised when the database stays locked longer than timeout.

Still differs from diskcache: FanoutCache.transact() still requires a key; evict() is the size-policy cull and evict_tag(tag) is diskcache's evict(tag); stats() returns a dict; Cache() with no directory uses ./.cache/ rather than a temp dir; the default size limit is unbounded (diskcache defaults to 1 GiB); no Deque, RLock, throttle, barrier, push/pull/peek, or read=True file handles.

C++ API

The same engine is usable directly from C++20 (header-only interface, single sciqlop_cache dependency via meson):

#include "sciqlop_cache/sciqlop_cache.hpp"

Cache cache(".cache/", /*max_size=*/1'000'000'000);

cache.set("key", data);                 // data: any contiguous byte range
cache.set("key", data, 60s);            // with expiration
cache.set("key", data, "mytag");        // with tag

auto value = cache.get("key");          // std::optional<Buffer>
cache.del("key");
cache.pop("key");                       // get + delete
cache.add("key", data);                 // set only if absent
cache.touch("key", 120s);
cache.touch("key");                     // drop the expiration
cache.evict_tag("mytag");
cache.incr("counter", 1, /*default=*/0);

Index index(".index/");                 // bare store, no policy overhead
FanoutCache fc(".fc/", /*shard_count=*/8, /*max_size=*/0);

Performance

These benchmarks compare sciqlop-cache with diskcache. Each library runs with its default settings, so the gaps you see come from the implementations.

Held identical for both libraries:

• Same machine, same Python interpreter, same benchmark process.
• Same storage: a RAM filesystem (tmpfs), so disk speed doesn't hide the library's own cost.
• Same keys, same random values, same number of operations. Both are driven through their public Python API (Cache.set / Cache.get / Cache.transact).
• Both use SQLite in WAL mode with synchronous=NORMAL.

Left at each library's default (these are the differences being measured):

Environment of the charts below:

Latency scaling (100 to 1M entries, 256-byte values)

Latency vs value size (64B to 1MB)

Batched transactions (per-op cost)

Amortized per-op latency drops significantly with larger batches, especially for small values:

export TMPDIR=/dev/shm PYTHONPATH=build

# Record the environment table above
python benchmark/env.py

# Scaling benchmarks
python benchmark/scaling.py --max-entries 1000000 --backend both > benchmark/scaling_results.csv
python benchmark/plot_scaling.py benchmark/scaling_results.csv -o benchmark/scaling_chart.png

python benchmark/scaling.py --max-entries 1000000 --raw --backend both > benchmark/scaling_raw.csv
python benchmark/plot_scaling.py benchmark/scaling_raw.csv --violin -o benchmark/scaling_violin.png

# Value-size and batch benchmarks
python benchmark/bench_valuesize.py > benchmark/valuesize_results.csv
python benchmark/plot_valuesize.py benchmark/valuesize_results.csv -o benchmark

Building from source

pip install meson-python numpy
meson setup build -Dwith_tests=true
meson compile -C build
meson test -C build                   # full suite (~10 min; includes stress tests)
meson test -C build --no-suite slow   # daily loop (~90 s)

License

MIT

How it works (the internals)

Everything below is for readers who want to know why they can trust this thing. No need to read it to use the library.

The big picture

flowchart TB
    subgraph PY["Python layer (pysciqlop_cache)"]
        API["Cache / Index / FanoutCache<br/>dict API, memoize, locks, serializers"]
    end
    subgraph NB["nanobind bindings"]
        GIL["GIL released around every call"]
    end
    subgraph CORE["C++ core (header-only)"]
        STORE["_Store&lt;DiskStorage, Policies...&gt;<br/>per-instance recursive_mutex"]
        FS["FanoutStore (N shards)"]
    end
    subgraph DISK["On disk (one directory per store)"]
        DB[("sciqlop-cache.db<br/>SQLite WAL<br/>keys, metadata, small values")]
        BLOBS["ab/cd/&lt;uuid&gt;-&lt;pid&gt;<br/>blob files (values &gt; 8 KB)"]
    end
    API --> NB --> STORE --> DB
    STORE --> BLOBS
    FS --> STORE

One cache = one directory containing a SQLite database plus zero or more blob files. Python never touches disk directly; every operation goes through the C++ _Store, which is composed at compile time from policy mixins (WithExpiration, WithEviction, WithTags, WithStats) — Index is simply _Store with no policies, so a bare store pays zero overhead for features it doesn't use.

How data is stored: hybrid blob/file storage

Values take one of two paths, chosen by size (threshold: 8 KB):

flowchart LR
    S["set(key, value)"] --> Q{value ≤ 8 KB?}
    Q -->|yes| B["inline BLOB in the<br/>cache row (path = NULL)"]
    Q -->|no| F["write value to a new blob file<br/>(exclusive create, uuid+pid name)"]
    F --> R["row stores path + size<br/>(value = NULL)"]

• Small values (≤ 8 KB) are stored inline in the SQLite row. One transaction, nothing else on disk.
• Large values (> 8 KB) are written to their own file, named <uuid>-<pid> and spread over a two-level directory fanout (ab/cd/…) so no directory grows unwieldy. The row keeps the relative path, so the whole cache directory can be moved or copied and still resolves.
• Reads of file-backed values are memory-mapped — the bytes are never copied into Python until you actually use them. A small LRU cache keeps the last 128 mappings open to avoid mmap/munmap churn.

Why not put everything in SQLite? Large blobs would churn the WAL (every write goes through it) and force a memory copy on every read. Files + mmap avoid both.

The write path in detail

sequenceDiagram
    participant U as Your code
    participant S as _Store
    participant D as DiskStorage
    participant Q as SQLite (WAL)

    U->>S: set(key, big_value)
    S->>S: lock _mtx, BEGIN EXCLUSIVE
    S->>Q: SELECT old path/size for key
    S->>D: store(value)
    D->>D: open ab/cd/<uuid>-<pid> O_CREAT|O_EXCL
    alt path already exists (astronomically rare)
        D->>Q: is it referenced? (cache or trash table)
        Q-->>D: referenced - regenerate a fresh name and retry
        Q-->>D: orphaned leftover - overwrite in place and reuse
    end
    D-->>S: relative path
    S->>Q: REPLACE INTO cache (key, path, size, …)
    S->>Q: INSERT old path INTO trash (same txn)
    S->>Q: COMMIT
    Note over S,Q: row change and trash entry<br/>commit or roll back together

Three properties fall out of this ordering:

1. A row only ever points at a complete file — the file is fully written and closed before the row referencing it commits.
2. Displaced files are never deleted inline — the old path goes into a trash table in the same transaction, and a background thread unlinks it after a 5-second grace period. A reader in another process that grabbed the old path microseconds before the commit can still open the file.
3. Filenames are structurally unique per store — random UUID plus the process id, created with O_EXCL so a duplicate can never silently overwrite live data. The collision-healing path exists for completeness and is fully exercised by tests, but you will likely never see it run.

Thread safety

• Every _Store instance has a single std::recursive_mutex; all public operations take it. Sharing one Cache between Python threads is safe.
• The nanobind bindings release the GIL around every call into C++, so a thread blocked on the store mutex never starves other Python threads.
• The mmap-handle LRU cache has its own tiny mutex because the background thread can drop handles without holding the store lock.
• Key iteration uses a snapshot cursor: all keys are pulled under the lock in one shot, then iterated lock-free — iteration never blocks writers.

Process safety

Multiple processes can open the same cache directory concurrently. This works because:

• SQLite runs in WAL mode with a 600 s busy timeout — readers never block writers and vice versa; writers serialize cleanly.
• Compound operations (set replacing an entry, del, pop, tag eviction) run inside BEGIN EXCLUSIVE transactions, so the read-then-write sequences that would race across processes are atomic.
• Deletion is path-aware: cleanup after a failed load runs DELETE … WHERE key = ? AND path = ?, so a process can never delete another process's freshly-committed row by mistake.
• File removal after delete/evict checks that the row actually disappeared (sqlite3_changes) before unlinking — a lost busy-timeout race orphans a file (harmless, cleaned up by check()) instead of dangling a row (data loss).

Fork safety

fork() clones only the calling thread — a naive child inherits locked mutexes and a broken WAL connection. SciQLop Cache registers every live store with pthread_atfork:

• prepare (pre-fork): the background thread is stopped and joined, and the store mutex is taken, so the fork happens in a quiesced state.
• parent: everything resumes.
• child: the mutex is reinitialised, the SQLite connection is reopened from scratch, the background thread is restarted — and the blob-filename RNG is reseeded (this matters: without it, parent and children would generate identical UUID sequences and different keys' values could land on the same file; the pid suffix in the filename is a second, structural guarantee).

Both one-shot fork → touch → exit patterns and long-lived reused worker pools (multiprocessing.Pool with the fork start method) are covered by regression tests. See docs/known-issues/ for the full investigations.

Self-healing

The design assumes crashes and races will happen and makes them cheap:

flowchart TB
    subgraph automatic["Automatic (every operation / background thread)"]
        R1["get() load failure → retry up to 4×,<br/>re-reading the row's current path"]
        R2["row confirmed dangling (file gone)<br/>→ path-aware row deletion"]
        R3["background thread: checkpoint WAL,<br/>evict expired/LRU entries,<br/>drain trash after 5 s grace"]
    end
    subgraph ondemand["On demand: cache.check(fix=True)"]
        C1["PRAGMA integrity_check"]
        C2["dangling rows → deleted"]
        C3["orphaned files → removed"]
        C4["size mismatches → corrected"]
        C5["meta counters recomputed from<br/>the cache table"]
    end

• Crash mid-write? The uncommitted row never pointed at the file; the orphaned file is found by check() (and contributes nothing to volume()).
• Crash after commit, before trash drain? The trash entry is durable; the next process's background thread finishes the deletion.
• Counters (count, size, file_size) are maintained by SQL triggers in the same transaction as every row change, reconciled once against ground truth on open (versioned by a counters_v marker), and verified by check().
• A transient error never becomes data loss: if a file exists but can't be opened (fd exhaustion, permissions), get() reports a soft miss and keeps the row.

Eviction, expiration and the background thread

Each store runs a low-priority background thread that, roughly once per second:

1. passively checkpoints the WAL (the writer connection's own wal_autocheckpoint finishes the job under heavy write load, bounding the WAL at ~18 MB),
2. deletes expired entries (and, if max_size is set and exceeded, evicts least-recently-used entries down to 90 % of the limit),
3. drains the trash table.

Files are only unlinked after their row is confirmed deleted — never before.

Durability and consistency settings

For the curious, the exact pragmas every connection runs with: journal_mode=WAL, synchronous=NORMAL, wal_autocheckpoint=4000, cache_size=10000, temp_store=MEMORY, mmap_size=256MB, busy_timeout=600000, recursive_triggers=ON. This trades last-transaction-on-power-loss durability (the default synchronous=FULL guarantee) for large throughput; a process crash or clean exit loses nothing.

Tested so you don't have to think about it

The suite includes multi-process stress tests, fork-safety reproducers for every historical bug (kept as docs/known-issues/*.md post-mortems), torture tests tagged slow, property-based (hypothesis) tests, and thread-sanitizer builds. If a failure mode ever ships to production, it comes back as a regression test.