Modular caching with XSL and PHP

The last time I talked about XSL I mentioned how powerful it is for caching. In this post I’m going to talk about how I use it and how you can easily implement it. In this post I’m going to talk a bit more about how I handle caching with XSL and PHP.

When I started the last iteration of Christian Lyrics I spent a lot of time looking for the best way to cache my data and templates. I wanted each page load to do as little as possible. Unfortunately most of the templating engines I saw had medicore cache control at best, and it was starting to look like I need to work on a new one. Then I found XSL. I had already fallen in love with SimpleXML and DOM, and with XSL I was able to utlize both for views. I’m not going into detail how my view class works, instead I’m just going to cover the caching techniques I use. So let’s get started!

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The Power of XSL

When we did the last rewrite of Christian Lyrics I spent a good bit of time working on the template system. I loathe Smarty due to how bloated it is, but almost went with it because needed modular caching (guests all see the same static files, logged in users see their user info, etc…). We ended up using a Savant style system (no stupid custom tags, no parsing, just PHP) that works pretty well, but has some short comings still. After we finished the rewrite, I spent some time exploring other options. Only one caught my eye: XSL.

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Okay I’m done switching, I promise

Wordpress 2.5 is slick.

The new admin interface is very nice. Everything you need is easy to get too, and it looks beautiful. I’m getting ready to look at plugins and themes, so there will be changes going through still.