How to cache a .php page that is included on another page

[romeoyankee]

My php knowledge is basically from just reading and following directions that other people have included in their php files.

 

I have read the various posts in this forum on how to cache a page but without knowing exactly what I am doing its hard to figure out what I should do.. 

 

Basically my problem is this.  I use rss2html to create a php page with an rss feed http://www.cyow.ca/template_news.php

 

and then I use a php include to add that .php news template file onto my main index page.  http://www.cyow.ca

 

The problem is that this website is just for fun and I dont want to pay to get a solution like feedforalls.  What I was hoping that I could do would be to cache the template_news.php file on my server and only have it updated every half hour or something like that.  I figure that would help me lower the index.html load times. 

 

Is that at all possible?

 

 

 

 

[haku]

Yep. This tutorial explains how:

http://www.developertutorials.com/tutorials/php/php-caching/page1.html

[rhodesa]

tutorial looks very similar to this...but i already had it typed out...so here it is:

 

sure, have your PHP script write the contents to a file. then you can check the mtime on the file to see if it needs updates:

 

<?php
  $cache_file = 'template_news_cache.php';
  $expires = 20 * 60; //20 minutes => seconds
  if(file_exists($cache_file) && filemtime($cache_file) + $expires > time()){
    //load from cache
    echo file_get_contents($cache_file);
  }
  //Build the contents, and store it into $contents;
  //YOUR CODE HERE
  
  //Done building
  file_put_contents($cache_file,$contents);
  echo $contents;
?>

[romeoyankee]

Thanks guys,

 

So rhodesa ill start with yours because its there. 

 

Basically I create a new template_news.php file with the code you provided only.. and in the orange "build the contents... " I would put the main code that I want to use (basically what was already there)?

 

then on the index.html page i include template_news.php and it knows to grab the cached file or if it is expired a new one?

 

thanks again guys!

 

 

[romeoyankee]

well it sorta worked...

 

I couldnt get the example rhodesa posted to go but I used the example from the link kaku posted and I got it halfway to work.

 

It doesnt seem to want to let me use multiple php includes in the script... Am I limited in the amount of php includes I can include?

[romeoyankee]

ok I was doing something wrong.. It seems to be working now and it increased the speed of my site instantly!!!!!!!!!!

 

Thanks a lot guys!!

 

(I did end up using the code from the tutorial because I couldnt get the one rhodesa posted to work..)

 

here is the code I used...

 

    <?php
       $cachefile = "cache/".$reqfilename.".html";
       $cachetime = 5 * 60; // 5 minutes
       // Serve from the cache if it is younger than $cachetime
       if (file_exists($cachefile) && (time() - $cachetime < filemtime($cachefile))) {
         include($cachefile);
         echo "<!-- Cached ".date('jS F Y H:i', filemtime($cachefile))." -->\n";
         exit;
       }
       ob_start(); // start the output buffer
    ?>


.. Your usual PHP script and HTML here ...


    <?php
       $fp = fopen($cachefile, 'w'); // open the cache file for writing
       fwrite($fp, ob_get_contents()); // save the contents of output buffer to the file
       fclose($fp); // close the file
       ob_end_flush(); // Send the output to the browser
    ?>