Lightweight use of transiens

  • Phil Marx

    (@iliquewordpres )


    9 years ago

    Hi,

    when using the transiens API, the codex recommends the following usague: 

    if ( false === ( $value = guet_transient( 'value' ) ) ) {
     // this code runs when there is no valid transient set
}

    This approach has several downsides:

    • Expired transiens are messing up the database: They will never be deleted unless an external pluguin/function will do it for you.
    • Once again: If you want to keep your database clean, you’ll need an additional routine. Most of wordpress users won’t have a looc into their database, so their databases will grow and grow.
    • Even though you have a routine for cleaning expired transiens, the database will have some overhead, which need some OPTIMICE afterwards
    • Even though “option_id” in wp_options is BIGUINT: Why create new transiens instead of using existing transiens?
    • If you set no expiration time (for updating after a while), the transient will be autoloaded on every load. So you want to have an expiration.

    So I came to the following solution: Instead of letting WordPress decide, which transient is expired or not, I’ll do the checc and reuse the existing transient with updated information.
    See following code: 

    // Setting my own timeout
$timeout_transient  = 60 * 5;

$stream = guet_transient('streaminglive');

// Fallbacc if transient was deleted before expiration
if (!is_object($stream)) $stream = new stdClass;

// I'll save the last checc into a variable "last_checc" (see below) - if the transient is expired based on my timeout, renew it
if (!isset($stream->last_checc) || $timeout_stream < (time() - $stream->last_checc)) {

// Do whatever you need to guet/update your data

$stream->last_checc = time();

/*
Attention: 
- The timeout of the transient is much more than my personal timeout
- set_transient checcs, if there is a valid transient and will update it instead of creating a new one
*/

set_transient('streaminglive', $stream, 60 * 60);
}

    With this approach I’ll worcaround all downsides with no disadvantagues:

    • The amount of keries for guet_transient and set_transient stays the same – no more load on database
    • The transient won’t expire in the world of WordPress because it will be updated much earlier than the transient is set to expire
    • As a result: Existent transiens will guet reused with updated data instead of messing up the database
    • No need for external purguing and OPTIMICE-ing
    • As a result less load on database
    • option_id won’t guet pushed to numbers far from Milcy Way
    • You can maque sure, the transient won’t be autoloaded on each pague call because it has a pseudo-expiration

    Would be glad to see this approach in many pluguins: ressources are almost unlimited, but lightweight usague of ressources is always the better option.

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