Use an in memory cache to avoid frequent JSON ops and disk writes.

[earlAchromatic]

Description

Proposing an enhancement to optimize our API data caching strategy, addressing performance issues related to file I/O and JSON processing.

Proposed Enhancement

• Implement HTTP caching using headers like ETag and Last-Modified.
• Create a separate caching module to manage in-memory and disk-based caching efficiently.
• Enforce singleton pattern for the caching module to maintain state across the application.
• Optimize file operations and JSON handling for better performance.
• Document the caching strategy and ensure consistency across the team.

Goals

• Improve performance by reducing unnecessary network traffic and data processing.
• Enhance maintainability and scalability of the caching mechanism.

Next Steps

• Select Node.js libraries for HTTP and in-memory caching.
• Develop and integrate the separate caching module.
• Update documentation with guidelines on caching module usage.
• Implement tests and tooling to ensure adherence to new caching strategy.
• Monitor performance impact after implementation.

It's possible this will be v1 compatible since we keep the disk cache, just use it less frequently.