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How to Cache API response in Kotlin

Caching is key to boosting app performance by reducing network requests and speeding up data retrieval. In this article, we’ll explore how to implement various caching techniques in Kotlin using popular libraries like Retrofit, Volley, Apollo etc., helping you optimize API performance and improve the user experience.

While there are many other Api Client libraries in Android and Kotlin, we will be focusing on the three most popular listed below

LibraryTypeFeaturesUse Case
Retrofit RESTPopular, supports OkHttp, Coroutines, RxJava, JSON/XMLREST APIs
VolleyRESTBuilt-in caching, image loading, retry policiesREST APIs(Android-specific)
ApolloGraphQLStrongly typed GraphQL queries, caching, Kotlin coroutinesGraphQL APIs

Now, we’ll explore how we can cache response using these libraries along with basic code examples.

Retrofit

Retrofit, by far the most popular API client library for REST APIs in Android provides support for caching via OkHttp.
You can configure OkHttpClient with a disk cache, and Retrofit will automatically cache responses based on HTTP cache headers like Cache-Control.

Example ->

Volley

Volley is an HTTP library developed by Google that makes networking for Android apps easier and faster. Volley has built-in support for caching HTTP responses to disk. By default, it caches responses in memory and can store responses on disk based on HTTP headers (Cache-Control, Expires).

Example ->

Apollo

Apollo is a powerful GraphQL client for Android that simplifies data fetching and management by generating strongly typed models from GraphQL queries. Apollo provides two major ways to cache any API response namely Normalized Cache and HTTP Response Cache.

Normalized Cache Example ->

HTTP Cache Example ->

This is how we can cache API responses in popular API client Libraries of Android in Kotlin Language.
Hope this helps you.
Keep coding and keep

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