5-minute file cache in PHP

Question

I have a very simple question: what is the best way to download a file in PHP but only if a local version has been downloaded more than 5 minute ago?

In my actual ca

Answer 1

Here is a simple version which also passes a windows User-Agent string to the remote host so you don't look like a trouble-maker without proper headers.

<?php

function getCacheContent($cachefile, $remotepath, $cachetime = 120){

    // Generate the cache version if it doesn't exist or it's too old!
    if( ! file_exists($cachefile) OR (filemtime($cachefile) < (time() - $cachetime))) {

        $options = array(
            'method' => "GET",
            'header' => "Accept-language: en\r\n" .
            "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; en-US)\r\n"
        );

        $context = stream_context_create(array('http' => $options));
        $contents = file_get_contents($remotepath, false, $context);

        file_put_contents($cachefile, $contents, LOCK_EX);
        return $contents;

    }

    return file_get_contents($cachefile);
}

Answer 2

You would warp it into a cache like method:

function getFile($name) {
    // code stolen from @Peter M
    if ($file exists) {
      if ($file time stamp older than 5 minutes) {
         $file = file_get_contents($url)
      }
    } else {
         $file = file_get_contents($url)
    }
    return $file;
}