Boosting Angular App Performance: Implementing Memoization and Caching Techniques

As an Angular developer, you constantly strive to create high-performing applications that deliver exceptional user experiences. Two powerful techniques that can significantly enhance your app’s performance are memoization and caching. By leveraging these smart optimizations, you can make your Angular app work smarter, not harder, by reducing redundant computations and minimizing data retrieval times. In this blog, we’ll take you through a step-by-step implementation of memoization and caching in your Angular application, helping you unlock the full potential of optimization for a faster and more efficient user experience.

Step 1: Identifying Functions for Memoization and Data for Caching
To begin, carefully examine your Angular app and identify computationally heavy functions that are frequently called or involve complex calculations. These functions will be prime candidates for memoization. Additionally, pinpoint data that is frequently accessed or retrieved from APIs, as it can benefit from caching to reduce redundant server requests.

Step 2: Empowering Your App with Memoization
Memoization is like having a brilliant assistant that remembers previous calculations, so they don’t have to be repeated. Implementing memoization involves creating a cache to store the results of expensive function computations. Let’s see how this can be done using a JavaScript object as the cache:

// Create a memoization cache
const memoCache: Record<string, any> = {};

// Function to be memoized
function expensiveCalculation(n: number): number {
  if (n in memoCache) {
    return memoCache[n]; // Return cached result if available
  }

  // Perform expensive calculation and store the result in the cache
  const result = /* perform calculation */;
  memoCache[n] = result;
  return result;
}

Step 3: Accelerating API Responses with Caching
Next, unleash the power of caching for API responses using Angular’s built-in HTTP interceptors and the HttpCachingModule. By intercepting outgoing HTTP requests and handling caching logic, you can reduce the need for repeated server calls and optimize data retrieval. Here’s a simple HTTP interceptor implementation for caching:

import { Injectable } from '@angular/core';
import { HttpInterceptor, HttpRequest, HttpHandler, HttpResponse } from '@angular/common/http';

@Injectable()
export class CachingInterceptor implements HttpInterceptor {
  private cache: Map<string, HttpResponse<any>> = new Map();

  intercept(req: HttpRequest<any>, next: HttpHandler) {
    if (req.method !== 'GET') {
      return next.handle(req); // Only cache GET requests
    }

    const cachedResponse = this.cache.get(req.url);
    if (cachedResponse) {
      return of(cachedResponse.clone()); // Return cached response if available
    }

    return next.handle(req).pipe(
      tap((event) => {
        if (event instanceof HttpResponse) {
          this.cache.set(req.url, event.clone()); // Cache the response
        }
      })
    );
  }
}

Step 4: Introducing Client-Side Caching for Seamless Experience
Extend the optimization to client-side caching, where frequently used data or computed values are stored temporarily to reduce the need for repeated retrieval. You can use browser storage like localStorage for this purpose. Here’s an example of caching form data:

// Save form data to localStorage
function saveFormDataToCache(formData: any): void {
  localStorage.setItem('form_data', JSON.stringify(formData));
}

// Retrieve form data from localStorage
function getFormDataFromCache(): any {
  const cachedData = localStorage.getItem('form_data');
  return cachedData ? JSON.parse(cachedData) : null;
}

Step 5: Empower Your Angular App with Memoization and Caching
Now that you’ve implemented memoization and caching, it’s time to integrate them into your Angular application. Apply memoization to computationally heavy functions, leverage HTTP interceptors for API caching, and utilize client-side caching where needed.

Conclusion:
By incorporating memoization and caching techniques in your Angular application, you can take a giant leap towards optimizing its performance and user experience. With reduced computation times, minimized network requests, and seamless data retrieval, your app will work smarter, not harder, to deliver a snappy and responsive experience to users. As you embark on this optimization journey, your Angular app will shine brighter and stand out in the competitive digital landscape.