Extensions

HTTPX provides an extension mechanism to allow additional information to be added to requests and to be returned in responses. hishel makes use of these extensions to expose some additional cache-related options and metadata. These extensions are available from either the hishel.CacheClient / hishel.AsyncCacheClient or a httpx.Client / httpx.AsyncCacheClient using a hishel transport.

Request extensions

force_cache

If this extension is set to true, Hishel will cache the response even if response headers would otherwise prevent caching the response.

For example, if the response has a Cache-Control header that contains a no-store directive, it will not cache the response unless the force_cache extension is set to true.

>>> import hishel
>>> client = hishel.CacheClient()
>>> response = client.get("https://www.example.com/uncachable-endpoint", extensions={"force_cache": True})

Note

You can configure this extension globally for the controller, rather than setting force_cache to True for each request.

cache_disabled

This extension temporarily disables the cache by passing appropriate RFC9111 headers to ignore cached responses and to not store incoming responses. For example:

>>> import hishel
>>> client = hishel.CacheClient()
>>> response = client.get("https://www.example.com/cacheable-endpoint", extensions={"cache_disabled": True})

This feature is more fully documented in the User Guide

Response extensions

from_cache

Every response from will have a from_cache extension value that will be True when the response was retrieved from the cache, and False when the response was received over the network.

>>> import hishel
>>> client = hishel.CacheClient()
>>> response = client.get("https://www.example.com")
>>> response.extensions["from_cache"]
False
>>> response = client.get("https://www.example.com")
>>> response.extensions["from_cache"]
True

cache_metadata

If from_cache is True, the response will also include a cache_metadata extension with additional information about the response retrieved from the cache. If from_cache is False, then cache_metadata will not be present in the response extensions.

Example:

>>> import hishel
>>> client = hishel.CacheClient()
>>> response = client.get("https://www.example.com/cacheable-endpoint")
>>> response.extensions
{
    ... # other extensions
    "from_cache": False
}
>>> response = client.get("https://www.example.com/cacheable-endpoint")
>>> response.extensions
{
    ... # other extensions
    "from_cache": True
    "cache_metadata" : {
        "cache_key': '1a4c648c9a61adf939eef934a73e0cbe',
        'created_at': datetime.datetime(2020, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0),
        'number_of_uses': 1,
    }
}