caching - How would you implement an LRU cache in Java?

Question

Please don't say EHCache or OSCache, etc. Assume for purposes of this question that I want to implement my own using just the SDK (learning by doing). Given that the cache will be used in a multithreaded environment, which datastructures would you use? I've already implemented one using LinkedHashMap and Collections#synchronizedMap, but I'm curious if any of the new concurrent collections would be better candidates.

UPDATE: I was just reading through Yegge's latest when I found this nugget:

If you need constant-time access and want to maintain the insertion order, you can't do better than a LinkedHashMap, a truly wonderful data structure. The only way it could possibly be more wonderful is if there were a concurrent version. But alas.

I was thinking almost exactly the same thing before I went with the LinkedHashMap + Collections#synchronizedMap implementation I mentioned above. Nice to know I hadn't just overlooked something.

Based on the answers so far, it sounds like my best bet for a highly concurrent LRU would be to extend ConcurrentHashMap using some of the same logic that LinkedHashMap uses.

Answer 1

I like lots of these suggestions, but for now I think I'll stick with LinkedHashMap + Collections.synchronizedMap. If I do revisit this in the future, I'll probably work on extending ConcurrentHashMap in the same way LinkedHashMap extends HashMap.

UPDATE:

By request, here's the gist of my current implementation.

private class LruCache<A, B> extends LinkedHashMap<A, B> {
    private final int maxEntries;

    public LruCache(final int maxEntries) {
        super(maxEntries + 1, 1.0f, true);
        this.maxEntries = maxEntries;
    }

    /**
     * Returns <tt>true</tt> if this <code>LruCache</code> has more entries than the maximum specified when it was
     * created.
     *
     * <p>
     * This method <em>does not</em> modify the underlying <code>Map</code>; it relies on the implementation of
     * <code>LinkedHashMap</code> to do that, but that behavior is documented in the JavaDoc for
     * <code>LinkedHashMap</code>.
     * </p>
     *
     * @param eldest
     *            the <code>Entry</code> in question; this implementation doesn't care what it is, since the
     *            implementation is only dependent on the size of the cache
     * @return <tt>true</tt> if the oldest
     * @see java.util.LinkedHashMap#removeEldestEntry(Map.Entry)
     */
    @Override
    protected boolean removeEldestEntry(final Map.Entry<A, B> eldest) {
        return super.size() > maxEntries;
    }
}

Map<String, String> example = Collections.synchronizedMap(new LruCache<String, String>(CACHE_SIZE));