CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phparraysinformation-retrieval
Lukeluha
Lukeluha

Reputation: 263

Load the big array in one time and use the loaded in everywhere

I am coding simple search engine (using vector model) and I have a big text file with indexes. In my application, I have to load the file and convert it to an array

At this moment, I create new instance of class in every page, which loads this file to the array.

Can I load this array only once (at the beginning) and then use the loaded one, which is written in RAM, I suppose?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 240

Answers (1)

Latheesan
Latheesan

Reputation: 24116

Short answer; Yes!

There are several options you can use. PHP has a library called APC

You can do something like this...

apc_store and apc_fetch

<?php
$bar = 'BAR';
// store variable $bar in memory for 1 hour with key 'foo'
apc_store('foo', $bar, 3600);
var_dump(apc_fetch('foo'));
?>

Here's a proper use case example:

This automatically deals with expired cache and re-loads cache.

<?php

// Config?
define('CACHE_LIFESPAN', 3600); // 1 Hour

// Helper Function
function loadXYZData() {
    $result = @apc_fetch(__FUNCTION__);
    if (!$result) {
        $result = array('a' => 'b', 'c' => 'd'); // dummy data
        @apc_store(__FUNCTION__, $result, CACHE_LIFESPAN);
    }
    return $result;
}

// Usage - through out all your scripts
$myXYZData = loadXYZData();
var_dump($myXYZData);

?>

Here, the APC cache uses the function name as the cache key. So, you will be creating a function similar to the above per cacheable data in your application.

Above script's output is:

array (size=2)
  'a' => string 'b' (length=1)
  'c' => string 'd' (length=1)

Beyond APC, there are third party key value pair storage engine (in memory) like Memcached: http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.memcached.php

There are others, if you look around.

Upvotes: 1

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