Really confused about snippets - scala

Question

I have a problem with my lift view. The thing is, I am making an expensive remote rest-api call twice - where I should really need to do it only once.
But I can't figure out how to solve this.
Basically I have an HTML template like this, that needs to display the list of users and their count:
//UserSearchResults.html
Num users: <span class="lift:UserSearchResults.userCount"></span>
User list:
<ul>
<lift:UserSearchResults.userList>
<li><user:userName/></li>
</lift:UserSearchResults.userList>
</ul>
And then I have an actual snippet that goes and retrieves the list of users from the rest-api server. However, note that it actually does this TWICE - once to count the number of users, and once to render the list.
//UserSearchResults.scala
/** Get list of users from api */
def users: List[User] = {
val url = "http://server/rest-api/user-search";
val result = io.Source.fromURL(url).mkString
//... parse users into List[User] and return it
return entries
}
/** Render user count */
def userCount =
"* *" #> users.length //<-- ONE call
def userList(in: NodeSeq): NodeSeq = {
users.flatMap(user => Helpers.bind("user", in, //<--SECOND call
"userName" -> user.user_name))
}
Is there a better place to put the api call? Is there like a "constructor" for the snippet, that I can use cache the user list, and to share it across all the functions in the class?
Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

If UserSearchResults is a class (as opposed to an object), then there will be a per-request instance of that class. As such, all you have to do is change your def users to a lazy val users and you should be good to go.

Answer 2

If your snippet extends StatefulSnippet, you can just save the list in an instance variable. Another option would be to put the list into a RequestVar. Then it could also be accessed from other snippets.