Basic Caching

On this page we describe the use of Tyk’s API response cache at the API level (Global); for details on the more advanced Endpoint level cache you should refer to this page.

Caching is configured separately for each API according to values you set within the API definition. Subsequently, the caching scope is restricted to an API definition, rather than being applied across the portfolio of APIs deployed in the Gateway.

If you are using the Tyk Dashboard you can set these options from the Dashboard UI, otherwise you will need to edit the raw API definition.

Configuring Tyk’s API-level cache

Within the API Definition, the cache controls are grouped within the cache_options section.

The main configuration options are:

• enable_cache: Set to true to enable caching for the API
• cache_timeout: Number of seconds to cache a response for, after which the next new response will be cached
• cache_response_codes: The HTTP status codes a response must have in order to be cached
• cache_all_safe_requests: Set to true to apply the caching rules to all requests using GET, HEAD and OPTIONS HTTP methods

For more advanced use of the API-level cache we also have:

• cache_by_headers: used to create multiple cache entries based on the value of a header value of your choice
• enable_upstream_cache: used to allow your upstream service to identify the responses to be cached
• cache_control_ttl_headers: used with enable_upstream_cache

An example of basic caching

To enable global caching for all safe requests to an API, only storing HTTP 200 responses, with a 10 second time-to-live (TTL), you would set:

"cache_options": {
  "enable_cache": true,
  "cache_timeout": 10,
  "cache_all_safe_requests": true,
  "cache_response_codes": [200]
}

Selective caching by header value

To create a separate cache entry for each response that has a different value in a specific HTTP header you would configure the cache_option.cache_by_headers option with a list of the headers to be cached.

For example, to cache each value in the custom Unique-User-Id header of your API response separately you would set:

  "cache_options": {
   "cache_by_headers": ["Unique-User-Id"]
}

Configuring the Cache via the Dashboard

Follow these simple steps to enable and configure basic API caching via the Dashboard.

Step 1: Go to the Advanced Options

From the API Designer, select the Advanced Options tab:

Step 2: Set the Cache Options for the Global Cache

Here you must set:

1. Enable caching to enable the cache middleware
2. Cache timeout to set the TTL (in seconds) for cached requests
3. Cache only these status codes to set which response codes to cache (ensure that you click ADD after entering each response code so that it is added to the list)
4. Cache all safe requests to enable the global cache