Cacher

Cacher is a plugin for CakePHP that allows you to easily cache find results. While most solutions for caching queries force you to overwrite Model::find() in your AppModel, Cacher only requires adding a behavior to your model.

Have settings that hardly change? Have a database list of states or something that never change but you still want them in the db? Just like caching your results? Use Cacher!

Requirements

• CakePHP >= 2.0.x (check tags for older versions of CakePHP)

Usage

var $actsAs = array(
    'Cacher.Cache'
);

By default, Cacher uses the 'default' cache configuration in your core.php file. If you want to use a different configuration, just pass it in the 'config' key.

var $actsAs = array(
    'Cacher.Cache' => array(
        'config' => 'myCacheConfiguration'
    )
);

It's best to place Cacher last on your list of behaviors so the query Cacher looks for reflects the changes the previous behaviors might have made.

Options that you can pass:

• config The name of an existing Cache configuration to duplicate (default 'default')
• clearOnSave Whether or not to delete the cache on saves (default true)
• clearOnDelete Whether or not to delete the cache on deletes (default true)
• auto Automatically cache (default false)
• gzip Automatically compress/decompress cached data (default false)

Using Cacher with Model::find(), Controller::paginate(), etc.

If you set auto to false, you can pass a 'cacher' key in your query that is either true to cache the results, false to not cache it, or a valid strtotime() string to set a duration for that specific call.

// cache the results of this query for a day
$this->Post->find('all', array(
	  'conditions' => array('Post.name LIKE' => '%awesome%'),
	  'cacher' => '+1 day'
));
// don't cache the results of this query at all
$this->Post->find('all', array(
	  'conditions' => array('Post.name LIKE' => '%lame%'),
	  'cacher' => false
));
// cache using the default settings even if auto = false
$this->Post->find('all', array(
	  'conditions' => array('Post.name LIKE' => '%okay i guess%'),
	  'cacher' => true
));

How it works

Cacher intercepts any find query and temporarily changes the datasource to one that handle's checking the cache..

You can always disable Cacher by using Behavior::detach() or Behavior::disable().

Features

• Quick and easy caching by just attaching the behavior to a model
• Clear cache for a specific model on the fly using $this->Post->clearCache()
• Clear a specific query by passing the conditions to clearCache()

Todo

• I'd like to add other caching functionality to make it more all-in-one
• Would like to make the Cache datasource a reuseable, standalone datasource

Notes

Since Cacher caches the entire results of a find, some cache can become stale before it's parent does. For example, let's say you cache the results of finding a post and containing all comments. If a comment is deleted and the cache remains, it will show that comment. The only way to remove it would be to invalidate the original query on the Post model. Ideas around this have been passed around between some developers and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to handle this.