Updating cache without blocking - c++

Question

I currently have a program that has a cache like mechanism. I have a thread listening for updates from another server to this cache. This thread will update the cache when it receives an update. Here is some pseudo code:
void cache::update_cache()
{
cache_ = new std::map<std::string, value>();
while(true)
{
if(recv().compare("update") == 0)
{
std::map<std::string, value> *new_info = new std::map<std::string, value>();
std::map<std::string, value> *tmp;
//Get new info, store in new_info
tmp = cache_;
cache_ = new_cache;
delete tmp;
}
}
}
std::map<std::string, value> *cache::get_cache()
{
return cache_;
}
cache_ is being read from many different threads concurrently. I believe how I have it here I will run into undefined behavior if one of my threads call get_cache(), then my cache updates, then the thread tries to access the stored cache.
I am looking for a way to avoid this problem. I know I could use a mutex, but I would rather not block reads from happening as they have to be as low latency as possible, but if need be, I can go that route.
I was wondering if this would be a good use case for a unique_ptr. Is my understanding correct in that if a thread calls get_cache, and that returns a unique_ptr instead of a standard pointer, once all threads that have the old version of cache are finished with it(i.e leave scope), the object will be deleted.
Is using a unique_ptr the best option for this case, or is there another option that I am not thinking of?
Any input will be greatly appreciated.
Edit:
I believe I made a mistake in my OP. I meant to use and pass a shared_ptr not a unique_ptr for cache_. And when all threads are finished with cache_ the shared_ptr should delete itself.
A little about my program: My program is a webserver that will be using this information to decide what information to return. It is fairly high throughput(thousands of req/sec) Each request queries the cache once, so telling my other threads when to update is no problem. I can tolerate slightly out of date information, and would prefer that over blocking all of my threads from executing if possible. The information in the cache is fairly large, and I would like to limit any copies on value because of this.
update_cache is only run once. It is run in a thread that just listens for an update command and runs the code.

Answer 1

I feel there are multiple issues:
1) Do not leak memory: for that never use "delete" in your code and stick with unique_ptr (or shared_ptr in specific cases)
2) Protect accesses to shared data, for that either using locking (mutex) or lock-free mecanism (std::atomic)
class Cache {
using Map = std::map<std::string, value>();
std::unique_ptr<Map> m_cache;
std::mutex m_cacheLock;
public:
void update_cache()
{
while(true)
{
if(recv().compare("update") == 0)
{
std::unique_ptr<Map> new_info { new Map };
//Get new info, store in new_info
{
std::lock_guard<std::mutex> lock{m_cacheLock};
using std::swap;
swap(m_cache, new_cache);
}
}
}
}
Note: I don't like update_cache() being part of a public interface for the cache as it contains an infinite loop. I would probably externalize the loop with the recv and have a:
void update_cache(std::unique_ptr<Map> new_info)
{
{ // This inner brace is not useless, we don't need to keep the lock during deletion
std::lock_guard<std::mutex> lock{m_cacheLock};
using std::swap;
swap(m_cache, new_cache);
}
}
Now for the reading to the cache, use proper encapsulation and don't leave the pointer to the member map escape:
value get(const std::string &key)
{
// lock, fetch, and return.
// Depending on value type, you might want to allocate memory
// before locking
}
Using this signature you have to throw an exception if the value is not present in the cache, another option is to return something like a boost::optional.
Overall you can keep a low latency (everything is relative, I don't know your use case) if you take care of doing costly operations (memory allocation for instance) outside of the locking section.

Answer 2

shared_ptr is very reasonable for this purpose, C++11 has a family of functions for handling shared_ptr atomically. If the data is immutable after creation, you won't even need any additional synchronization:
class cache {
public:
using map_t = std::map<std::string, value>;
void update_cache();
std::shared_ptr<const map_t> get_cache() const;
private:
std::shared_ptr<const map_t> cache_;
};
void cache::update_cache()
{
while(true)
{
if(recv() == "update")
{
auto new_info = std::make_shared<map_t>();
// Get new info, store in new_info
// Make immutable & publish
std::atomic_store(&cache_,
std::shared_ptr<const map_t>{std::move(new_info)});
}
}
}
auto cache::get_cache() const -> std::shared_ptr<const map_t> {
return std::atomic_load(&cache_);
}