Django-Cache Testing

Question

Since i'm new to django-cache, I was trying to cache a particular view in Django. I'm not sure whether the data is fetched from cache or from the database. How do I verify that? Being a newbie, kindly also check that I'm caching the view correctly or not?

Views.py

@cache_page(900)
def dashboard(request):

    __something__

Settings.py

CACHES = {
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.memcached.MemcachedCache',
        'LOCATION': '127.0.0.1:11211',
    }
}
CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_ALIAS = 'default'
CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_SECONDS = 600

Answer 1

If it wasn't a view, I'd have recommended this: open up an interactive shell with manage.py shell, then do:

from django.db import connection
# execute your functions
print connection.queries

This list will fill up with SQL queries as you execute them.

But since it's a view, I'd recommend you to use django-debug-toolbar. Besides other useful things, it'll show you the queries executed while handling the request.

Answer 2

You are doing it correctly. Code you wrote is for Memcached Cache not Database caching. So cache data is stored in the RAM of your server not in your database. Usually this is the fastest caching technique, but if your server doesn't have enough memory this can crash your server and all your cached data will be lost.

For Database caching your cache settings should be configured as shown below and then your cache will be stored as a database table. Here my_cache_table being the table name.

CACHES = {
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.db.DatabaseCache',
        'LOCATION': 'my_cache_table',
    }
}

Read the Django cache documentation, it has very useful info.