Cron Cacher

This task enables you to handle caching on your own schedule.

Refresh caches as often as needed, not just when it's requested & expired.

Installation

Tested with Fuel V1.0 RC3.

To install the Cron Cacher task, place the included files into their respective Fuel app folders.

• fuel/app/tasks/croncacher.php
• fuel/app/config/croncacher.php

Usage

You will have to set a cron job for Cron Cacher to run. If you plan to cache frequently, set the cron job for every 5 or 15 minutes. Methods for adding cron jobs will vary by hosting provider and plan. The following is the Oil command you would use.

php oil r croncacher

You may need to tweak it to make it work. For example, Media Temple uses PHP 5.2 by default and offers ways to opt in to newer versions of PHP. Since Fuel is a framework for PHP 5.3, you have to find the location of a PHP 5.3 binary to run. For Grid Service, here is what I've found to work.

"/usr/local/php-5.3.2/bin/php" "/home/XXXXXX/domains/XXXXXX/oil" r croncacher

Simply replace the first set of X's is the account number and the second set is the domain.

Configuration

The config file accepts arrays for parameters to be used directly with the Cache class' set method. The second param is where you add a view or static method. Please note that there is a specific way to actually cache the code as it would output to the browser. Details below.

Example

In the following example, the global/header view is set for caching every hour. Note that ->render() allows the cache to be executed then stored as a string.

<?php

return array(
    array(
        'header',
        "View::factory('global/header')->render()",
        3600
    )
);

You can also cache methods. Your controller methods can be cached similarly to the example below. Note the use of the Request class and the string casting operator, (string). Without it, you won't get the executed code.

<?php

return array(
    array(
        'index-dynamic',
        "(string) Request::factory('welcome/index')->execute()",
        86400
    )
);

Getting Caches

When retrieving a cache, you probably won't want to trigger the expiration. To grab the header view from the example above, the code would be as follows.

Cache::get('header',false);

Further documentation

All parameters for Cache::set() also work with this task. Please refer to the Cache Class documentation.