The Include Engine

Include Engine Features

 

The FileEngine is currently the default cache engine in CakePHP.

In this article I will change the behavior of the FileEngine caching class by sub-classing it to make it able to do the following:

1. Creates/reads a cached PHP file (real PHP file) that stores one more variable(s).
2. Although IncludeEngine is used for temporary caching (by default), however, adding the key ‘forever’ => true in its configuration will make this cached version “permanent” so the date-time checking is skipped
3. The ‘serialize’ key of the configuration is still true by default, and is still recommend (more secure and even faster!) for any non-resource data type variable (int, float, string, boolean, array, object). However, you may ask the IncludeEngine to create a human readable (in our case non serialized) cached version of the variables you want to store (cache). So setting the ‘serialize’ key of the configuration to false is secure for just scalar variables and scalar arrays (int, float string, boolean and arrays that are based on primitive scalar data type

 

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Include Engine Class

Downloaded the Include Engine From http://github.com/Harake

(I personally put the class in the “app\libs\cache” directory, and I name it as “include.php”)

 

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Changes in your own “app\config\bootstrap.php”

You can create more than one configuration for the include engine, but assume that you want only two, you should do something like this

if (floatval(Configure::read('Cake.version')) < 1.3) {
 include_once APP . 'libs' . DS . 'cache' . DS . 'include.php';
} else {
 include_once APPLIBS . 'cache' . DS . 'include.php';
}
Cache::config('cfg1', array(
 'engine' => 'Include',
 'path' => CACHE . 'persistent' . DS,
 'prefix' => 'CFG1_',
 'serialize' => true
));
Cache::config('cfg2', array(
 'engine' => 'Include',
 'path' => CACHE . 'persistent' . DS,
 'prefix' => 'CFG2_',
 'forever' => true,
 'serialize' => true
));
Cache::config('default');

 

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Where and how to use it

In general, it can be used anywhere in your application like this

Cache::config('cfg1'); // Comment it for 1.3 or higher
$cached_vars = Cache::read('put here the filename', 'cfg1');
if (empty($cached_vars)) {
 //collect the variables with their values before caching them
 Cache::write('put here the filename', array('var1_name' => 'var1_value', 'var2_name' => 'var2_value'), 'cfg1');
 Cache::config('default'); // Comment it for 1.3 or higher
} else {
 Cache::config('default'); // Comment it for 1.3 or higher
 //variables are already cached, let us retrieve them
 $var1_name = $cached_vars['var1_name'];
 $var2_name = $cached_vars['var2_name'];
}

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