Caching a PHP Array

My problem is im creating a large nested PHP array which is parsing information from multiple external sources.

开发者_JAVA技巧

On the first return I would like to cache this data.

Im pretty new to caching so don't really know what I should be looking for, any good or bad methods or even if this is common practise! Have googled but not really found anything decent for a cache noob.

Im already using smarty to cache my page content (excluding the dynamic bits), done apache tweaks, minifying etc to increase performance but page loading is still far to long. Sometimes upto 8 seconds!

Using PHP5 with Smarty. Using cURL to parse the XML which is then being stored into the array.

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You could try to cache to a file:

file_put_contents("cache_file", serialize($myArray));

Then to load the cache:

$myArray = unserialize(file_get_contents("cache_file"));

This will work if the things in your array are serializable: no DB connections or file handles, or things like that. Strings and numbers are just fine.

If you need something fancier you can use a memory-based cache like memcached.

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If you use Smarty template engine, it exists a plugin for v3.1 that enable APC (Alternate PHP Cache) as an op-code cache, you also have a built-in memory storage area for lightning fast access to data.

Available here : https://www.smarty.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=86501&sid=efc098e0cfb090a94e8c0d362c609263#86501

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have you thought about putting static $yourData = array(); in your method where you download the data then test whether theres any data in this static array and use that, overwise get the data? hope this helps in some way :D