Generic caching is used if the context defines at least one org.springframework.cache.Cache bean, a CacheManager wrapping them is configured.

JCache is bootstrapped via the presence of a javax.cache.spi.CachingProvider on the classpath (i.e. a JSR-107 compliant caching library) and the JCacheCacheManager provided by the spring-boot-starter-cache ‘Starter’. There are various compliant libraries out there and Spring Boot provides dependency management for Ehcache 3, Hazelcast and Infinispan. Any other compliant library can be added as well.

It might happen that more than one provider is present, in which case the provider must be explicitly specified. Even if the JSR-107 standard does not enforce a standardized way to define the location of the configuration file, Spring Boot does its best to accommodate with implementation details.

# Only necessary if more than one provider is present
spring.cache.jcache.provider=com.acme.MyCachingProvider
spring.cache.jcache.config=classpath:acme.xml

	Note
	Since a cache library may offer both a native implementation and JSR-107 support Spring Boot will prefer the JSR-107 support so that the same features are available if you switch to a different JSR-107 implementation.

There are several ways to customize the underlying javax.cache.cacheManager:

	Tip
	If a standard javax.cache.CacheManager bean is defined, it is wrapped automatically in a org.springframework.cache.CacheManager implementation that the abstraction expects. No further customization is applied on it.

EhCache 2.x is used if a file named ehcache.xml can be found at the root of the classpath. If EhCache 2.x, the EhCacheCacheManager provided by the spring-boot-starter-cache ‘Starter’ and such file is present it is used to bootstrap the cache manager. An alternate configuration file can be provided as well using:

spring.cache.ehcache.config=classpath:config/another-config.xml

Spring Boot has a general support for Hazelcast. If a HazelcastInstance has been auto-configured, it is automatically wrapped in a CacheManager.

If for some reason you need a different HazelcastInstance for caching, you can request Spring Boot to create a separate one that will be only used by the CacheManager:

spring.cache.hazelcast.config=classpath:config/my-cache-hazelcast.xml

	Tip
	If a separate HazelcastInstance is created that way, it is not registered in the application context.

Infinispan has no default configuration file location so it must be specified explicitly (or the default bootstrap is used).

spring.cache.infinispan.config=infinispan.xml

Caches can be created on startup via the spring.cache.cache-names property. If a custom ConfigurationBuilder bean is defined, it is used to customize them.

If the Couchbase java client and the couchbase-spring-cache implementation are available and Couchbase is configured, a CouchbaseCacheManager will be auto-configured. It is also possible to create additional caches on startup using the spring.cache.cache-names property. These will operate on the Bucket that was auto-configured. You can also create additional caches on another Bucket using the customizer: assume you need two caches on the "main" Bucket (foo and bar) and one biz cache with a custom time to live of 2sec on the another Bucket. First, you can create the two first caches simply via configuration:

spring.cache.cache-names=foo,bar

Then define this extra @Configuration to configure the extra Bucket and the biz cache:

@Configuration
public class CouchbaseCacheConfiguration {

    private final Cluster cluster;

    public CouchbaseCacheConfiguration(Cluster cluster) {
        this.cluster = cluster;
    }

    @Bean
    public Bucket anotherBucket() {
        return this.cluster.openBucket("another", "secret");
    }

    @Bean
    public CacheManagerCustomizer<CouchbaseCacheManager> cacheManagerCustomizer() {
        return c -> {
            c.prepareCache("biz", CacheBuilder.newInstance(anotherBucket())
                    .withExpiration(2));
        };
    }

}

This sample configuration reuses the Cluster that was created via auto-configuration.

If Redis is available and configured, the RedisCacheManager is auto-configured. It is also possible to create additional caches on startup using the spring.cache.cache-names property.

	Note
	By default, a key prefix is added to prevent that if two separate caches use the same key, Redis would have overlapping keys and be likely to return invalid values. We strongly recommend to keep this setting enabled if you create your own RedisCacheManager.

Caffeine is a Java 8 rewrite of Guava’s cache and will supersede the Guava support in Spring Boot 2.0. If Caffeine is present, a CaffeineCacheManager (provided by the spring-boot-starter-cache ‘Starter’) is auto-configured. Caches can be created on startup using the spring.cache.cache-names property and customized by one of the following (in this order):

For instance, the following configuration creates a foo and bar caches with a maximum size of 500 and a time to live of 10 minutes

spring.cache.cache-names=foo,bar
spring.cache.caffeine.spec=maximumSize=500,expireAfterAccess=600s

Besides, if a com.github.benmanes.caffeine.cache.CacheLoader bean is defined, it is automatically associated to the CaffeineCacheManager. Since the CacheLoader is going to be associated to all caches managed by the cache manager, it must be defined as CacheLoader<Object, Object>. Any other generic type will be ignored by the auto-configuration.

If Guava is present, a GuavaCacheManager is auto-configured. Caches can be created on startup using the spring.cache.cache-names property and customized by one of the following (in this order):

For instance, the following configuration creates a foo and bar caches with a maximum size of 500 and a time to live of 10 minutes

spring.cache.cache-names=foo,bar
spring.cache.guava.spec=maximumSize=500,expireAfterAccess=600s

Besides, if a com.google.common.cache.CacheLoader bean is defined, it is automatically associated to the GuavaCacheManager. Since the CacheLoader is going to be associated to all caches managed by the cache manager, it must be defined as CacheLoader<Object, Object>. Any other generic type will be ignored by the auto-configuration.

If none of these options worked out, a simple implementation using ConcurrentHashMap as cache store is configured. This is the default if no caching library is present in your application.

When @EnableCaching is present in your configuration, a suitable cache configuration is expected as well. If you need to disable caching altogether in certain environments, force the cache type to none to use a no-op implementation:

spring.cache.type=none