Elefant handlers have access to a $cache object that you can use to add caching to your custom code. This object uses the Memcache API, but provides a choice of several backends: APC, Filesystem, Memcache, Redis, and XCache. It defaults to caching files in the filesystem.
Here's an example of how easy it is to add caching to a handler in Elefant:
<?php
$res = $cache->get ('my_list');
if (! $res) {
$res = DB::fetch ('select * from foo');
$cache->set ('my_list', $res, 3600); // 1 hour
}
?>
Alternately, you can implement it via a callback function like this:
<?php
$cache->cache ('my_list', 3600, function () {
return DB::fetch ('select * from foo');
});
?>
The returned data will automatically be cached, and the function will only be called if the data isn't already in the cache.
Elefant also supports automatic caching of a handler's output with a simple one-liner. To cache a handler indefinitely, use:
<?php
$this->cache = true;
?>
To cache for 5 minutes, use:
<?php
$this->cache = 300;
?>
Should you need to reset the cache for a handler (from another handler, since the original is being cached), you can delete the cache for any handler via:
<?php
$cache->delete ('_c_myapp_somehandler');
?>
The key name takes the form _c_myapp_somehandler where the _c_ has been added and slashes have been converted to underscores.
Note that there are some limitations to handler caching, namely that any headers or scripts that have been added via header() or $this->add_script() will not be added again, so make sure to only use this on handlers that don't use these.