Module: ActionController::Caching::Pages

Defined in:
lib/action_controller/caching.rb

Overview

Page caching is an approach to caching where the entire action output of is stored as a HTML file that the web server can serve without going through the Action Pack. This can be as much as 100 times faster than going the process of dynamically generating the content. Unfortunately, this incredible speed-up is only available to stateless pages where all visitors are treated the same. Content management systems – including weblogs and wikis – have many pages that are a great fit for this approach, but account-based systems where people log in and manipulate their own data are often less likely candidates.

Specifying which actions to cache is done through the caches class method:

class WeblogController < ActionController::Base
  caches_page :show, :new
end

This will generate cache files such as weblog/show/5 and weblog/new, which match the URLs used to trigger the dynamic generation. This is how the web server is able pick up a cache file when it exists and otherwise let the request pass on to the Action Pack to generate it.

Expiration of the cache is handled by deleting the cached file, which results in a lazy regeneration approach where the cache is not restored before another hit is made against it. The API for doing so mimics the options from url_for and friends:

class WeblogController < ActionController::Base
  def update
    List.update(@params["list"]["id"], @params["list"])
    expire_page :action => "show", :id => @params["list"]["id"]
    redirect_to :action => "show", :id => @params["list"]["id"]
  end
end

Additionally, you can expire caches using Sweepers that act on changes in the model to determine when a cache is supposed to be expired.

Setting the cache directory

The cache directory should be the document root for the web server and is set using Base.page_cache_directory = “/document/root”. For Rails, this directory has already been set to RAILS_ROOT + “/public”.

Setting the cache extension

By default, the cache extension is .html, which makes it easy for the cached files to be picked up by the web server. If you want something else, like .php or .shtml, just set Base.page_cache_extension.

Defined Under Namespace

Modules: ClassMethods

Class Method Summary collapse

Instance Method Summary collapse

Class Method Details

.included(base) ⇒ Object

:nodoc:



60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
 
# File 'lib/action_controller/caching.rb', line 60

def self.included(base) #:nodoc:
  base.extend(ClassMethods)
  base.class_eval do
    @@page_cache_directory = defined?(RAILS_ROOT) ? "#{RAILS_ROOT}/public" : ""
    cattr_accessor :page_cache_directory

    @@page_cache_extension = '.html'
    cattr_accessor :page_cache_extension
  end
end

Instance Method Details

#cache_page(content = nil, options = {}) ⇒ Object

Manually cache the content in the key determined by options. If no content is provided, the contents of @response.body is used If no options are provided, the current options for this action is used. Example:

cache_page "I'm the cached content", :controller => "lists", :action => "show"



130
131
132
133
 
# File 'lib/action_controller/caching.rb', line 130

def cache_page(content = nil, options = {})
  return unless perform_caching && caching_allowed
  self.class.cache_page(content || @response.body, url_for(options.merge({ :only_path => true, :skip_relative_url_root => true })))
end

#expire_page(options = {}) ⇒ Object

Expires the page that was cached with the options as a key. Example:

expire_page :controller => "lists", :action => "show"



116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
 
# File 'lib/action_controller/caching.rb', line 116

def expire_page(options = {})
  return unless perform_caching
  if options[:action].is_a?(Array)
    options[:action].dup.each do |action|
      self.class.expire_page(url_for(options.merge({ :only_path => true, :skip_relative_url_root => true, :action => action })))
    end
  else
    self.class.expire_page(url_for(options.merge({ :only_path => true, :skip_relative_url_root => true })))
  end
end