Improving performance of MVC applications

Configuring web farms on MVC applications

When using the MVC development model, your MVC application and Kentico application should always be configured to run as servers in a web farm (see Starting with MVC development). The web farm ensures that the MVC application invalidates cache according to content or setting changes made in the Kentico application and vice versa.

The MVC application works as a web farm server, because it uses the same database as the Kentico application and performs operations through the Kentico API.

License limitations: This scenario requires a license with an extra web farm server. See Kentico licensing for MVC applications for more details.

Caching in MVC applications

You can cache the data and output of controller actions in your MVC application.

Prerequisite: for caching in your MVC application to work correctly, your Kentico and MVC applications need to be configured as a web farm.

Specifically, you can cache the following:

• Data you retrieve to display on individual web pages.
• Output of controller actions.

Caching data in MVC applications

We recommend using caching of data, especially for data that is frequently accessed (queried from the database). For example, you may want to cache individual pages, forms and any other data that you retrieve from the Kentico database and display on the site.

For pages, custom table data or forms, you can handle the caching in individual repositories that make use of the generated providers. Another approach would be using AOP and decorating the individual repositories – see our MVC demo site for a reference on how to use this approach.

Use the CacheHelper.Cache method to cache data in your code.

Examples

Note: To ensure consistency of the viewed data, you should always generate cache keys with all the parameters that you use to retrieve the data. So that, for example, after switching to a different culture, visitors don’t see the displayed articles in the previously selected culture.

The examples use minimal cache dependencies. See Setting cache dependencies for more information on how to configure cache dependencies for your scenarios.

Example: Caching the data of multiple articles

public sealed class ArticleRepository : IArticleRepository
...
    public override IEnumerable<Article> GetArticles(int count = 0)
    {
        ...

        Func<IEnumerable<Article>> provideData = () => ArticleProvider.GetArticles()
                .OnSite(mSiteName)
                .Culture(mCultureName)
                .TopN(count)
                .OrderByDescending("DocumentPublishFrom")
                .TypedResult; // Ensures that the result of the query is saved, not the query itself.

        var cacheSettings = new CacheSettings(10, "myapp|data|articles", mSiteName, mCultureName, count)
        {
            GetCacheDependency = () =>
            {
                // Create caches dependencies. This example makes the cache clear data when any article is modified, deleted, or created in Kentico.
                var dependencyCacheKey = String.Format("nodes|{0}|{1}|all", mSiteName, Article.CLASS_NAME.ToLowerInvariant());
                return CacheHelper.GetCacheDependency(dependencyCacheKey);
            }
        };
        return CacheHelper.Cache(provideData, cacheSettings);
    }
...

Example: Caching the data of a single article

public sealed class ArticleRepository : IArticleRepository
...
    public override Article GetArticle(Guid nodeGuid)
    {
        ...
        Func<Article> provideData = () => ArticleProvider.GetArticle(nodeGuid, mCultureName, mSiteName).FirstObject;

        var cacheSettings = new CacheSettings(10, "myapp|data|article", nodeGuid, mCultureName, mSiteName)
        {
            GetCacheDependency = () =>
            {
                // Creates cache dependencies. This example makes the cache clear the data when the specified article is modified in Kentico (any culture version).
                string dependencyCacheKey = String.Format("nodeguid|{0}|{1}", mSiteName, nodeGuid);
                return CacheHelper.GetCacheDependency(dependencyCacheKey);
            }
        };
        return CacheHelper.Cache(provideData, cacheSettings);
    }
...

Caching controller action output in MVC applications

You can cache the output of individual controller actions using ASP.NET output caching. This can significantly increase your website performance. We recommend caching the output of all possible controller actions, especially on controllers that return often requested views.

Use the OutputCache attribute to mark the action methods you want to cache. Set the cache duration (in seconds) and other properties of the attribute.

When storing the output cache on the server (when the OutputCache attribute’s Location property is set to Server), you can define cache dependencies to accommodate various scenarios with both static and dynamic content. Use the HttpContext.Response.AddCacheItemDependency() method to add dependencies in individual controller action methods.

Controller actions can be called in situations in which the dummy cache items have not yet been created. To account for that, ensure the existence of the dummy cache item explicitly by calling CacheHelper.EnsureDummyKey().

using System;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.Mvc;

using CMS.Helpers;

...

[OutputCache(Duration=600, VaryByParam="none", Location = OutputCacheLocation.Server)]
public ActionResult Index()
{
    var articles = mArticleRepository.GetArticles();

    // Sets cache dependencies. This example makes the system clear the cache when any article is modified in Kentico.
    string dependencyCacheKey = String.Format("nodes|mvcsite|{0}|all", Article.ClassName.ToLowerInvariant());
    CacheHelper.EnsureDummyKey(dependencyCacheKey);
    HttpContext.Response.AddCacheItemDependency(dependencyCacheKey);

    return View(articles);
}

Note: The example uses minimal cache dependencies – the cache is cleared when any of the articles the method works with is modified, deleted, or when a new article is created. See Setting cache dependencies for more information on how to configure cache dependencies for your scenarios.