bosi/content-cache

A content cache based on php, apache2 and htaccess

0.3.0 2020-11-25 16:31 UTC

Requires

• php: >=7.3

Requires (Dev)

• phpunit/phpunit: ^9

MIT

• Florian Bosdorff

README

This package provides a caching mechanism on file system level for super fast delivery of cached data.

Requirements

• composer (for installation)
• at least php 7.3
• apache2 webserver
• some kind of cron to clear cache from time to time

Installation

composer require bosi/content-cache

Usage

1. Initialize the cache somewhere in your application bootstrapping

   <?php
   use Bosi\ContentCache\ContentCache;
   ContentCache::init('/absolute/path/to/webserver/root'); 
   

2. Add cached responses after you have rendered the full response

    <?php
    use Bosi\ContentCache\ContentCache;
      
    // somewhere at the and of your controller (e.g. inside middleware before sending response to user)
    ContentCache::addToCache($response);
   

3. Enable your apache webserver to serve cached responses by adding the following lines to your .htaccess

    # prevent direct indexing of cache dir
    <If "%{THE_REQUEST} =~ /content-cache.+\.file/">
       Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow"
    </If>
       
    # handle cache for index page
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/?$
    RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/content-cache/__index.file -f
    RewriteRule .? content-cache/__index.file [L]
       
    # handle cache for non-index page
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$
    RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/content-cache%{REQUEST_URI}.file -f
    RewriteRule . content-cache%{REQUEST_URI}.file [L]
   

4. Add a cronjon to your system to clear the cache from time to time e.g.

   */5 * * * * rm -rf /absolute/path/to/webserver/root/content-cache/*
   

   If you want to clear the cache with your php app you can use ContentCache::clearCache() (first parameter can be used to not flush the complete cache).

Nice to know

• Your application is only called when no fitting cached response can be found.
• This package creates a directory called content-cache below you defined webserver root. All cached responses are saved inside this directory and you can even delete single files/directories if you want to clear cache for specific paths.
• Requests with url query parameters will not be cached at all (maybe I'll at this later as a feature but currently ther're some problems with that).
• There are no further checks (execpt query params) against status code or http method to decide if a response should be cached. You have to implement such a check by yourself (e.g. by using the second param of ContentCache::init(...).
• You can have a look at the public/ directly for a full example usage of this package (you can even start a local environment using docker and make start to view the result).