Does file_get_contents use a cache?

Question

I have a function that generates a table with contents from the DB. Some cells have custom HTML which I'm reading in with file_get_contents through a templating system.

The small content is the same but this action is performed maybe 15 times (I have a limit of 15 table rows per page). So does file_get_contents cache if it sees that the content is the same?

Answer 1

file_get_contents() does not have caching mechanism. However, you can use write your own caching mechanism.

Here is a draft :

$cache_file = 'content.cache';
if(file_exists($cache_file)) {
  if(time() - filemtime($cache_file) > 86400) {
     // too old , re-fetch
     $cache = file_get_contents('YOUR FILE SOURCE');
     file_put_contents($cache_file, $cache);
  } else {
     // cache is still fresh
  }
} else {
  // no cache, create one
  $cache = file_get_contents('YOUR FILE SOURCE');
  file_put_contents($cache_file, $cache);
}

UPDATE the previous if case is incorrect, now rectified by comparing to current time. Thanks @Arrakeen.