Good aftenoon,

I created a super simple console app to test out the Enterprise Library Caching Application Block, and the behavior is blaffling. I'm hoping I screwed something that's easy to fix in the setup. Have each item expire after 5 seconds for testing purposes.

Basic setup -- "every second pick a number between 0 and 2. if the cache doesn't already have it, put it in there -- otherwise just grab it from the cache. Do this inside a LOCK statement to ensure thread safety.

APP.CONFIG:

<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <section name="cachingConfiguration" type="Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching.Configuration.CacheManagerSettings, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching, Version=4.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" />
  </configSections>
  <cachingConfiguration defaultCacheManager="Cache Manager">
    <cacheManagers>
      <add expirationPollFrequencyInSeconds="1" maximumElementsInCacheBeforeScavenging="1000"
      numberToRemoveWhenScavenging="10" backingStoreName="Null Storage"
      type="Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching.CacheManager, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching, Version=4.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"
      name="Cache Manager" />
    </cacheManagers>
    <backingStores>
      <add encryptionProviderName="" type="Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching.BackingStoreImplementations.NullBackingStore, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching, Version=4.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"
      name="Null Storage" />
    </backingStores>
  </cachingConfiguration>
</configuration>

C#:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common;
using Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching;
using Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching.Expirations;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        public static ICacheManager cache = CacheFactory.GetCacheManager("Cache Manager");
    static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            while (true)
            {
                System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000); // sleep for one second.
                var key = new Random().Next(3).ToString();
                string value;
                lock (cache)
                {
                    if (!cache.Contains(key))
                    {
                        cache.Add(key, key, CacheItemPriority.Normal, null, new SlidingTime(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5)));
                    }
                    value = (string)cache.GetData(key);
                }
                Console.WriteLine("{0} --> '{1}'", key, value);
                //if (null == value) throw new Exception(); 
            }
        }
    }
}

OUPUT -- How can I prevent the cache to returning nulls?

2 --> '2'
1 --> '1'
2 --> '2'
0 --> '0'
2 --> '2'
0 --> '0'
1 --> ''
0 --> '0'
1 --> '1'
2 --> ''
0 --> '0'
2 --> '2'
0 --> '0'
1 --> ''
2 --> '2'
1 --> '1'
Press any key to continue . . .

Thanks in advance, -Alan.