SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR CACHING HTTP POST REQUESTS AND RESPONSES

• US 20140040415A1
• Filed: 07/31/2013
• Published: 02/06/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 08/06/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: PayPal, Inc. (PayPal Holdings, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: PayPal, Inc. (PayPal Holdings, Inc.)
• Inventors: Mathew, Suresh, Rethi, Kumar
• Granted Patent: US 9,635,121 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/213
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9574 of access to content, e.g. by caching
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/2876 Pairs of inter-processing entities at each side of the network, e.g. split proxies
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/568 Storing data temporarily at an intermediate stage, e.g. caching

Abstract

With an idempotent POST request, the URL (and headers) cannot be used as an HTTP cache key. To cache idempotent POST requests, the POST body is digested and appended the URL with the digest and used as the cache key. Subsequent requests with the same payload will end up hitting the cache rather than the origin server. A forward cache proxy at the client end and reverse cache proxy at the server end are deployed. The client sends the request to the forward proxy that looks up the cache. If there is a cache miss, the forward cache proxy digests the body and sends only the digest to the reverse proxy. The reverse cache proxy looks up request cache to find if there is a match for the request and send that request to the server.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

one or more processors;

a digest module configured to, upon receiving a POST request, generate a digest of a body of the POST request, append a URL of the POST request with the digest, and to use the digest and the URL as a cache key;

an idempotency determination module configured to determine that the POST request is non-idempotent; and

a non-idempotent management module configured to, in response to the determination that the POST request is non-idempotent, forward the non-idempotent POST request to a server.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the digest module further adds one or more headers and corresponding values to the cache key.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the digest module further identifies a subsequent POST request according to a corresponding cache key having the same body as the POST request.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the digest module further replies to the subsequent POST request using data stored in a cache proxy.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the idempotency determination module further determines that the POST request is non-idempotent by configuring URLs and patterns in a proxy cache.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the idempotency determination module further determines that the POST request is non-idempotent by adding context aware headers.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the idempotency determination module further determines that the POST request is non-idempotent by basing cache logic on at least one naming convention.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the non-idempotent management module further forwards the non-idempotent POST request to the server if the URL is in a “

DO NOT CACHE”

URL list.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the non-idempotent management module further forwards the non-idempotent POST request to the server if a cached digest and the digest of the POST request do not match.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the non-idempotent management module further forwards the non-idempotent POST request to the server if a cache expiry time is passed.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the non-idempotent management module further forwards the non-idempotent POST request to the server if there is a request to revalidate the POST request.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the non-idempotent management module further attaches a warning indicating that content is stale.

13. The system of claim 1, further comprising a cache handshake module configured to manage communications between a forward cache proxy and a reverse cache proxy.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the cache handshake module further instructs the forward cache proxy to digest the body of the POST request and to transmit the digest to the reverse cache proxy.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the cache handshake module further instructs the reverse cache proxy to identify a stored match in a request cache based on the digest.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the cache handshake module further instructs the reverse cache proxy to send a response key to the forward cache proxy based on the stored match.

17. The system of claim 1, wherein the system is HTTP compliant.

18. The system of claim 1, wherein the POST request is at least 10KB.

19. A method comprising:

receiving a POST request;

using one or more processors, generating a cache key by generating a digest of a body of the POST request and appending a URL of the POST request with the digest;

determining that the POST request is non-idempotent; and

in response to the determination that the POST request is non-idempotent, forwarding the non-idempotent POST request to a server.

20. A non-transitory machine-readable medium having instructions embodied thereon, the instructions executable by one or more processors to perform operations comprising:

receiving a POST request;

using one or more processors, generating a cache key by generating a digest of a body of the POST request and appending a URL of the POST request with the digest;

determining that the POST request is non-idempotent; and

in response to the determination that the POST request is non-idempotent, forwarding the non-idempotent POST request to a server.