Viewcaching and cache-block - when to use?

Sunday 22 February 2004 7:48:14 am

Hi folks,
I really need help sorting out this:
When am I to use viewcaching, and when is cache-block the apropriate method?
Does it ever make sense to combine the methods??

Since viewcaching doesnt support the $node, I guess it will fit best for totally static sites. And I suppose cache-block is for dynamic parts of a site. But please, help me by sorting this out once and for all.

Ive looked through the docs, but viewcaching is hard to find.

Kind regards,
Nicklas Lundgren

Friday 27 February 2004 3:43:28 am

Thanks for the reply, Bård!

However, I still have some trouble regarding this.

In some sites I use random images. For instance, on a front page I want the main image to be randomly selected from a group of five images.
I now manage this in the following way:
1. I make a fetch from the folder where the images exist and run a "shuffle" operator on the resulting array.
2. I get the first image in the array and show it on the page.

This works if I place cache-block around the image, like in the code below:
---------------------------
{cache-block keys=array('random_image_frontpage',$image:item.node_id)}
<td valign="top" width="{$image:item.contentobject_version_object.data_map.image.content[large].width}" height="{$image:item.contentobject_version_object.data_map.image.content[large].height}">{attribute_view_gui attribute=$image:item.contentobject_version_object.data_map.image image_class="large"}</td>
{/cache-block}
----------------------------

However - when I activate viewcache, I get the same image on every page load.

Am I doing something stupid? In that case I would appreciate some guidance.

Kind regards
Nicklas Lundgren

Wednesday 03 March 2004 2:58:33 pm

May I ask for clarification on this as I was wondering... What *exactly* is the difference between ViewCaching and cache-block? Both seem to do the same thing - store a compiled template as html....

Regards,
Willie

Thursday 04 March 2004 2:48:12 am

cache-block is a general purpose caching mechanism for text blocks. It basicly stores the resulting text (or html) in a file and reloads that the next time. It also has expiration based on time and content publishing.

View caching on the other has more logic. For the first it has a predefined set of cache keys set. It also stores extra information in the cache files, sucb as override keys etc. which are restored the next time.
View caching is also integrated deeper with the publishing process, meaning that publishing will actually clear all related view cache files.

You should use cache-block in pagelayout and other non-content view templates. Using cache-block in for instance full.tpl generally has no speed increase.

--
Amos

Documentation: http://ez.no/ez_publish/documentation
FAQ: http://ez.no/ez_publish/documentation/faq

Tuesday 22 June 2004 7:54:23 am

How exactly do I disable the view caching on specific tpl file?
What is the syntax?

Tanks, Rami