For better UX mobile apps store data on the client side (on the device) to provide immediate information when loading an app without having to wait for data from the internet and providing data even when the device is offline. Of course data is updated/fetched whenever possible later on.
I am building an app (in flutter) which is a social network/information feed like app: there are users, profiles, feed, posts etc. When the user opens the app I would like to show data that was available the last time the app ran.
My question is what is the right way to implement cache? There are two main ways I can think of, an easier/uncertain way and a more difficult/stable way, and I would like your opinion about them. I have time/resource constraints ofc. Most information is through HTTP requests, so:
I would use an out-of-the-box cache plugin for my HTTP client. I think I can just cache the response for each request I make (for some time) and rely on the cached info. Images are also cached based on url. When I make a request on application load I return the cached result if there's any, and if it was a cache hit I fire the request again, so when you open the app you will see immediate information, but after a sec or so you will get the fresh data too. Usability of this solution ofc depends on how well I design my API.
This is the option I try to avoid, because it's more time implementing this. It could be either a SQL or document store, and I would have to implement the cache look up/save/update mechanism. Since I am just building the app, I think this would slow me down because data types/ architecture might still change. But is this the ultimate way to go with mobile side caching? Thank you
I think the easier way is your best bet the only time i can think of that cache could be a problem is if you need critical data that has to be correct and not a old cache value, but you can avoid this problem by not caching the critical values.
Also if you use firebase it does some automatic caching which might be useful.