Kohana Module – Pagecache

Last year, I have created a post about page caching in PHP. It was written in Kohana and was incorporated to my collection of classes that was packed into a single module. This time, I created Pagecache module for Kohana to separate it from all my other classes.

DC Pagecache

A simple page caching for kohana. Get the source code in github:

https://github.com/lysender/pagecache

When to use?

• When you are serving mostly static content.
• When content does not change for a long period of time.
• When you simply want page caching and knows when to clear cache.

How to use?

Simple. For a given URI (request), you will capture the output and feed it to the pagecache object. The pagecache object will then save the output to a directory. The next time the user requests the same URI, your webserver will serve the cached content without bothering Kohana.

You will just need to configure the following:

• Publicly accessible directory where you save the cached content.
• A certain URI pattern that can actually match a valid filename (ex: no space).
• A RewriteRule that will serve the cached content for a given URI.
• A controller that will capture the output of the request and will save it to cache.

Configuration

The default cache directory is at DOCROOT/media/pagecache but you can change it anytime. This is the default config at MODPATH/pagecache/config/pagecache.php:

return array(
	'cache_dir'		=> DOCROOT.'media/pagecache'
);

Assuming that DOCROOT/media is accessible directly from the outside world.

URI pattern

It is assumed that your URI can be directly mapped to a valid filename. The table below shows the URI to filename mapping:

Using the default config, it will map to:

Simple isn’t it?

The Rewrite Rule

In your .htaccess file, you will have something like this:

# BEGIN Page cache

RewriteRule ^/(.*)/$ /$1 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^$ media/pagecache/index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)/$ media/pagecache/$1/index.html [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ media/pagecache/$1/index.html [QSA]

# END Page cache

The Rewrite rule above will accomplish the URI pattern matching.

Capturing and saving output / page

The basic usage goes like this:

Pagecache::factory('/the/requested/uri')
	->write($the_page_output);

Currently, I used a controller to facilitate the page caching. Once a controller extends to this controller, it will automatically trigger output to be cached.

abstract class Controller_Cached extends Controller_Template
{
	public function after()
	{
		parent::after();

		$uri = Arr::get($_SERVER, 'REQUEST_URI', $this->request->uri());

		Pagecache::factory($uri)
			->write($this->response->body());
	}
}

It assumes that the controller uses a template. Once the after() method is called, it will capture the response and save it to cache using the current request URI.

For example you have a controller Controller_Faq, you can serve cached page by extending the Controller_Cached.

class Controller_Faq extends Controller_Cached {
	// The rest of the code here

Cleaning up

To cleanup your cached pages, simple call: Pagecache::cleanup(). Call it via a cron job with a certain interval.

Tests?

Currently, I haven’t created unit tests for the Pagecache module. Anyway, for comments, suggestions and issues, comment on github or drop me a message at: theman [at] lysender [dot] com.