Cache Inspection#

Here are some ways to get additional information out of the cache session, backend, and responses:

Response Details#

The following attributes are available on responses:

  • from_cache: indicates if the response came from the cache

  • cache_key: The unique identifier used to match the request to the response (see Request Matching for details)

  • created_at: datetime of when the cached response was created or last updated

  • expires: datetime after which the cached response will expire (see Expiration for details)

  • is_expired: indicates if the cached response is expired (if, for example, an old response was returned due to a request error)

Examples
>>> from requests_cache import CachedSession
>>> session = CachedSession(expire_after=timedelta(days=1))

>>> # Placeholder attributes are added for non-cached responses
>>> response = session.get('https://httpbin.org/get')
>>> print(response.from_cache, response.created_at, response.expires, response.is_expired)
False None None None

>>> # These attributes will be populated for cached responses
>>> response = session.get('https://httpbin.org/get')
>>> print(response.from_cache, response.created_at, response.expires, response.is_expired)
True 2021-01-01 18:00:00 2021-01-02 18:00:00 False

>>> # Print a response object to get general information about it
>>> print(response)
'request: GET https://httpbin.org/get, response: 200 (308 bytes), created: 2021-01-01 22:45:00 IST, expires: 2021-01-02 18:45:00 IST (fresh)'

Cache Contents#

Checking for responses#

Use BaseCache.contains() to check if a given request is cached.

Check if a specific URL is cached:

>>> print(session.cache.contains(url='https://httpbin.org/get'))

To match additional request values (parameters, headers, etc), you can pass a Request object instead:

>>> from requests import Request

>>> request = Request('GET', 'https://httpbin.org/get', params={'k': 'v'})
>>> print(session.cache.contains(request=request))

You can also check for a specific cache key:

>>> print(session.cache.contains('d1e666e9fdfb3f86'))

Filtering responses#

Use BaseCache.filter() to get responses with optional filters. By default, it returns all responses except any invalid ones that would raise an exception:

>>> for response in session.cache.filter():
>>>     print(response)

Get unexpired responses:

>>> for response in session.cache.filter(expired=False):
>>>     print(response)

Get keys for only expired responses:

>>> expired_responses = session.cache.filter(valid=False, expired=True)
>>> keys = [response.cache_key for response in expired_responses]

Deleting responses#

Use BaseCache.delete() to manually delete responses. See Manual Removal for examples.

Response URLs#

You can use BaseCache.urls() to see all URLs currently in the cache:

>>> session = CachedSession()
>>> print(session.cache.urls())
['https://httpbin.org/get', 'https://httpbin.org/stream/100']

Other response details#

If needed, you can access all responses via CachedSession.cache.responses, which is a dict-like interface to the cache backend, where:

  • Keys are cache keys (a hash of matched request information)

  • Values are CachedResponse objects

For example, if you wanted to see URLs only for POST requests:

>>> post_urls = [
...     response.url for response in session.cache.responses.values()
...     if response.request.method == 'POST'
... ]