HTTP_Cache released

Sunday, June 5. 2005

I just released HTTP_Cache 0.1.0 through our own PEAR-Channel at pear.php-tools.net. I proposed this package via PEPr some time ago, but because some of the functionality already is available in the packages HTTP_Header and HTTP_Download I never initiated the call for votes. But still I think this small package is quite useful when you need HTTP-Caching using ETag. As it supplies a handler for PHP's output buffering all you need to add to your scripts are two lines of code:

require_once 'HTTP/Cache.php';

$cache = &new HTTP_Cache(array('auto' => true));



echo "You now may send any data to the browser";

If a user now requests this page twice, it will be only sent to the browser once, unless the output has changed in the meantime.

If you are using PEAR 1.4 installing the package is nearly as easy as installing a package from PEAR:

$ pear channel-discover pear.php-tools.net

$ pear install pat/HTTP_Cache

The package will be get installed in the PEAR directory of you server and you can instantly start to use it.

Posted by schst in PHP at 17:10 | Comments (3)
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Hi Stephan!

You really shoul propose that package. Sounds great!

Regards,
Toby

#1 Toby (Homepage) on 2005-06-05 20:26

Hi Toby,

I already proposed this package last year, but several people did not like it, as the functionality is available, spread among HTTP_Header and HTTP_Download so I deleted the proposal....

#1.1 Stephan Schmidt on 2005-06-05 21:51

I'd say propose it again, looking at HTTP_Header_Cache shows not even a hint of Etag caching, the only packages I know that do Etag stuff are Cache (I do not recommend it

) and http_download, and frankly both of them are too big to bother with if you need simple set of http cache

Btw. I was comparing HTTP_Header_Cache and HTTP_Cache and I noticed some thing I'd like to get answers to, since I'm not that much up to speed in the header world

1) Why do you skip max-age=0 in you Cache-Control header ?
2) Why do you not use the 'Pragma', 'cache' header ? (ETag replaces that maybe ?)
3) Would you be interested to sync over the funcs that are present in HTTP_Header_Cache and fit HTTP_Cache ? (isOlderThan would maybe be one, not sure tho since I'm not all into header stuff like I said, so I might be misunderstanding how ETag works)

We can look at HTTP_Cache just like Cache_Lite, I mean HTTP_Header_Cache is extending HTTP_Header which Extends HTTP, and the functions it's using are just a overly complex versions of header(), those functions in question are good functions, but just slow down such simple stuff like HTTP_Header_Cache.
Sometimes it's good to use a monster, sometimes it's just best to stick to the basics.

So really, just go for it and propose again.

#2 Helgi Þormar (Homepage) on 2005-06-06 08:00

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