Re: [PHP-PEAR] Output_Cache Module

* Ulf Wendel wrote:
> from the suggested Output_Cache and the Function_Cache Sebastian wrote.
> The Output_Cache sounds quite similar to what Björn Schotte introduced
> at his employer

Well, I introduced a banner caching system with
an URLCrawler (where I want to PEARify the
URLCrawler), but not a generic output cache :)

But we also use intensively output caches in
shared memory, with the old shm_* functions.

An output cache should have the following
features:

- store data in a data container (shared
  memory, DB, ...)

- only store it if some conditions are
  true (specific timestamp is reached,
  caching data should be only valid for
  X seconds etc.)

- ability to flush the cache explicitely

- retrieve the data from the container

- provide an easy API to store datas of
  various types (no matter if it is an
  object, integer, hash or something else)

- get the status of a data container ("valid",
  "expired", "empty", ...)

- provide a mechanism to clearly identify
  a data container, i.e. give it a unique
  "label" for easy access. The API should
  detect label conflicts, so for storing
  the data it should use unique identifiers
  (md5 or sth. like that) and "map" them to
  the identifier that was given by the
  software dev. who calls the API

- provide a "server" mechanism with ext/sockets
  so that if you use shm for example, all the
  data is stored on a specific server and the
  API pulls the containers from this server which
  is listening on a socket port. This avoids having
  the same datas on each machine if you use clustered
  web servers (currently, in our application we have
  4 web frontends)

-- 
Björn Schotte                               [email protected]
http://rent-a-phpwizard.de/                   [email protected]

Software dev advocate: http://www.advogato.org/person/baerli/