Question

hey,
I have a c# server-side app that has db (mysql), and quite oftenly, due to my DB current schema, i have to retrieve a user’s id by his username in order to manipulate the user’s data (such as editing his profile db tables etc.) .

I was thinking of creating a simple cache class that when it handles a request for a specific username to userid mapping, it caches the result in a dictionary, or even in a dedicated dictionary for the first character of the given username.

Here is an example of what i was thinking:

public class UsernameToIdCache
{
    public int GetUserIdFromUsername(string username)
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(username)) return -1;

        var targetDictionary = _cacheDictionaries[username[0]];
        int id;
        if (targetDictionary.TryGetValue(username,out id))
        {
            return id;
        }
        else
        {
            id = RunSqlQuery("select id from users where username ='" + username + "'");
            if (IsDictionaryNotFull(targetDictionary))
            {
                targetDictionary.Add(username,id);
                return id;
            }
        }
    }
}

the IsDictionaryNotFull(Dictionary<int,string>) method is used for memory management (i don’t want the dictionaries to explode, so it can only help until the dictionaries are full) .

what do you think?
Is it a good db coding practice ?

Answer 1

Is it ASP.NET app? If so, consider putting ID into Session object. It will be loaded once the user logs in and no other magic cacheing is needed.