Working With Laravel Caching

10 April 2014

Caching is a temporary data storage used to store data for a while and can be retrieved quickly. It is often used to reduce the times we need to access database or other remote services. It can be a wonderful tool to keep your application fast and responsive.

Laravel provides various caching drivers. To explore supported drivers, Open app/config/cache.php and you will find a list of supported drivers and other options. By default, laravel use file driver which store cached data in app/storage/cache.

//app/config/cache.php
return array(
 //Default Cache Driver
 'driver' => 'file',

 //File Cache Location
 'path' => storage_path().'/cache',

 //Database Cache Connection
 'connection' => null,
 //Database Cache Table
 'table' => 'cache',

 //Memcached Servers
 'memcached' => array(
   array('host' => '127.0.0.1', 'port' => 11211, 'weight' => 100),
  ),

 //Cache Key Prefix
 'prefix' => 'laravel',
);

To store an item in the cache, You can use Cache::put() method. This method accepts 3 parameters.

$key: Item key used as identifier.
$value: Item value.
$minutes: Expire time in minutes.

Here’s an example.

//app/routes.php
Route::get('test', function(){
 Cache::put('title', 'Clivern', 30);
});

To store item in the cache if it doesn’t exist, You can use Cache::add(). This method has the same parameters of Cache::put(). It returns true if item added and false otherwise. Here’s an example.

//app/routes.php
Route::get('test', function(){
 Cache::put('title', 'Clivern', 30);
});

To retrieve previously created items, You might use Cache::has() method to check if item exist and then retrieve it’s value with Cache::get().

//app/routes.php
Route::get('test', function(){
 if(Cache::has('title')){
  return Cache::get('title');
 }
});

The Cache::get() method can accept second parameter which is the value to return if cached item not exist or expired. You can call it default value.

//app/routes.php
Route::get('test', function(){
  return Cache::get('unknown_key','default value');
});

To store cached items forever, You can use Cache::forever(). This method has only two parameters. The first is the item key and the second is the value.

//app/routes.php
Route::get('test', function(){
   Cache::forever('keywords', 'laravel,php,frameworks');
});

To remove an item from cache, You can use Cache::forget() method. This method accepts one parameter which is the item key.

Route::get('test', function(){
  Cache::forget('keywords');
  Cache::forget('title');
});

Database Cache

You may need to create custom table to hold all caching data. You will need first to create migration file by running the following command in your terminals.

$php artisan migrate:make create_cache_table

Created Migration: 2014_04_09_234537_create_cache_table
Generating optimized class loader

Now we are ready to build table schema. It should be look like this.

use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;

class CreateCacheTable extends Migration {

	/**
	 * Run the migrations.
	 *
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function up()
	{
           //create table
           Schema::create('cache', function($table){
            $table->string('key')->unique();
            $table->text('value');
            $table->integer('expiration');
           });
	}

	/**
	 * Reverse the migrations.
	 *
	 * @return void
	 */
	public function down()
	{
         //drop table
         Schema::drop('cache');
	}

}

Let’s run our migrations to create cachetable.

$php artisan migrate:install

Migration table created successfully.

$php artisan migrate

Migrated: 2014_04_09_234537_create_cache_table

Open app/config/cache.php and change cache driver into database like that.

//app/config/cache.php
return array(
 //Default Cache Driver
 'driver' => 'database',

 //File Cache Location
 'path' => storage_path().'/cache',

 //Database Cache Connection
 'connection' => null,
 //Database Cache Table
 'table' => 'cache',

 //Memcached Servers
 'memcached' => array(
   array('host' => '127.0.0.1', 'port' => 11211, 'weight' => 100),
  ),

 //Cache Key Prefix
 'prefix' => 'laravel',
);

Well Done! Now our cached data will be saved in cache table.