Gluing the pieces together: listing the whole source code - PHP

As I promised, here is the full caching script:

function writeCache($data,$cacheFile='default_cache.txt'){
            if(!$fp=fopen($cacheFile,'w')){
                        trigger_error('Error opening cache file');
                        exit();
            }
            if(!flock($fp,LOCK_EX)){
                        trigger_error('Unable to lock file');
                        exit();
            }
            if(!fwrite($fp,serialize($data))){
                        trigger_error('Error writing to cache file');
                        exit();
            }
            flock($fp,LOCK_UN);
            fclose($fp);
}
function readCache($cacheFile){
            if(!file_exists($cacheFile)){
                        trigger_error('Invalid cache file');
                        exit();
            }
            return unserialize(file_get_contents($cacheFile));
}
function readQueryResult($options=array()){
            // check parameters
            if(count($options)<5){
                        trigger_error('Invalid number of parameters');
                        exit();
            }
            // create connection variables
            foreach($options as $key=>$value){
                        ${$key}=$value;
            }
            // connect to MySQL
            if(!mysql_connect($host,$user,$password)){
                        trigger_error('Error connecting to the server '.mysql_error());
                        exit();
            }
            // select database
            if(!mysql_select_db($database)){
                       trigger_error('Error selecting database '.mysql_error());
                       exit();
            }
            // check if query starts with SELECT
            if(!preg_match("/^SELECT/",$query)){
                        trigger_error('Invalid query. Must start with SELECT');
                        exit();
            }
            if(!$result=mysql_query($query)){
                       trigger_error('Error performing query '.$query.mysql_error());
                       exit();
            }
            while($row=mysql_fetch_array($result,MYSQL_ASSOC)){
                        $data[]=$row;
            }
            return $data;
}
function readData($options=array(),$cacheFile='default_cache.txt'){
            // check to see if cache file is valid (content changed triggered caching)
            if(file_exists($cacheFile)){
                        if(rand(1,100)>90){
                                   // read randomly data from MySQL
                                   $data=readQueryResult($options);
                                   // read cache data
                                   $cacheData=readCache($cacheFile);
                                   // compare cached data with fresh data
                                   // if content has changed then force new cache generation
                                   (md5(serialize($cacheData))==md5(serialize($data)))?
$data=$cacheData:writeCache($data,$cacheFile);
                        }
                        else{
                                   // read data from cache file
                                   $data=readCache($cacheFile);
                        }
            }
            else{
                        // read data from MySQL
                        $data=readQueryResult($options);
                        // store data in cache file
                        writeCache($data,$cacheFile);
            }
            return $data;
}
// read data from MySQL-cache file
$options=array('host'=>'host','user'=>'user','password'=>'password','database'=>
'databasename','query'=>'SELECT * FROM users');
$data=readData($options,'cache_file.txt');
// display data
foreach($data as $key=>$row){
            echo 'First Name :'.$row['firstname'].' Last Name :'.$row
['lastname'].'<br />';
}

At this point, we’ve developed a procedural solution that uses the nice advantages of result caching to reduce the overhead of making many connections to a database, running queries and getting results. Through the usage of the serialize-unserialize sequence, we’re able to build faster and more efficient PHP applications.

Summarizing

That’s about it for now. In this second part we’ve looked in detail at another result set caching system. It is triggered by a content change condition, by running randomly a SELECT query, in order to determine whether the data has been modified, and behaves accordingly. The result will be returned either from the database or the cache file.

While this method is suitable for small applications and certainly supports many modifications, we need to go further on this topic. Thus, over the third part of the series, we’ll definitely take the object-oriented approach, by developing a set of classes that work together to implement result set caching in large applications. Until then, stay tuned.