RE: [PHP] Cacheing data form PHP script

> $_SESSION sounds like a good way to go.. It just means that each user > will pull the data for the menu at least once. > > I've done something similar except it was a rather slow database query, > followed by a bunch of conditional data parsing. The end result wasn't > very much data (maybe a page's worth) but took a little while to > compile so we wanted to cache the data so it was only pulled once per > day. Here's what I did: > > 1. Check cache store in database to see if we have data for today. I > created a 'cache' table in a database with the following fields: > CacheID, CacheDate, CacheData, CacheDesc or something like that. > CacheID - Primary key, unique ID (autonum or SQLServer 'idenity' > field) > CacheDate - Date of last stored cache, does it equal today? If > not, pull new data > CacheData - Here's the fun part. I collected all the data into > an array, SERIALIZED the array and stored that into this field. All > data in one big chunk. > CacheDesc - Since I have multiple caches..or potentially do.. I > put a test desc so I can go in using WinSQL or something and know what > it is. That's for the humans :) > > 2. If we have data for today, pull it from the cache. Unserialize > data, run it through the same output processing function that I use for > 'fresh' data since it's already in the correct format > > 3. If cache isn't present, pull new data, insert/update database, > display data. > > Seems like a huge headache, maybe store the array in a session is the best bet, but then yes what if one of the admins goes into manage tool i built to manage the data on the pulldown menus ? So would you suggest store the array in a cache table as serialized, then if we update replace the data , using REPLACE ?