[development] Caching, caching, caching...

[John Handelaar]

Dries Buytaert wrote:
> 
> Cache by role doesn't work because there are many per-user settings (eg. 
> language preference, the username in the navigation-block, etc).


To be fair, I did *explicitly* mention that would be some
elements which could not be cached by role.

There are, however, a whole bunch which can - I'm confident
in my original assertion of 'vast majority', in fact.

That there are some places it can't work doesn't sound like
a good reason to not consider the places where it can -
unless we're going to keep thinking of caches as a full-page-
only thing.

i18n/l10n, as you say, would probably have to be another "vary"
switch.  This implies that we should maybe be thinking about
a new core hook, which modules can use to introduce/manage switching
cases.

How about stepping back and thinking about what variables can
affect caching on any given theme() function, and in which order
they do so?

eg

1.  (core) Role, and if not role then
2.  (core) User, and if not user then
3.  (i18n module) $some_i18n_variable, else
4.  ...what else?


Actually, that list might be upside down in practice, but
hopefully I've managed to get my point across.


Cached values would be returned for any function which
returns theme output... like...

[pseudo-code]

function node_page_default() {
   global $user;
   if (node_page_default_cache($user->uid)) {
      return node_page_default_cache($user-uid);
      }
      else {

      // original function here

      }
}

...where node_page_default_cache() would be an implementation
of hook_cache(), which in turn contains that order-of-preference
logic mentioned above.  $user->uid gives us the ability to
check roles, uids, and anything else we might need.

This would involve changing *lots* of functions, I realise,
but consider how many DB queries we'd be culling.

On the other hand, a well-written hook allows modules to
start using it incrementally - modules which haven't implemented
it yet don't fail.






-- 
-------------------------------------------
John Handelaar

E  john at handelaar.org    T +353 21 427 9033
M  +353 85 748 3790    http://handelaar.org
-------------------------------------------
Work in progress: http://dev.vocalvoter.com
-------------------------------------------