grep life by Jeremy Glover

Caching With Zend Framework Using Zend_Cache

Today I taught myself how to use Zend_Cache and implemented it within 20 minutes. It’s super easy and very effective. Take a look at the code sample below and you’ll be up and running in no time.

Step 1: Setup the Cache

$frontendOptions = array(
	'lifetime' => 180,	// Cache for 3 minutes
	'automatic_serialization' => true

);
$backendOptions = array('cache_dir' => dirname(__FILE__) . '/cache/');
$cache = Zend_Cache::factory(
	'Core',
	'File',
	$frontendOptions,
	$backendOptions);

Step 2: Use the Cache

$data = null;

if(!$data = $cache->load('data'))
{
	$service = new Service(API_KEY);
	$result = $service->generateReport();
	$data = $service->getReport();
	$cache->save($data, 'data');
}

else

{
	print("Cache Hit!");
}

The page load time went from about 9 seconds to 0.5 seconds! 18x faster and it only took a few lines of code. Awesome.

My main motivation for caching the data ($data in the code example) was actually to reduce the load on the web service which provides the data. We have a good relationship with the company providing the service but there’s a good chance they would become annoyed if we hammered their system to get the exact same data over and over. The load time improvement was a good side effect, though!

For more information on Zend_Cache which comes with the Zend Framework, check out the reference guide and API documentation.

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