Laravel HTML Cache

This package speeds up your laravel application by caching the final rendered html and header fields. So your database queries and view loading algorithms don't need to run every single page load.

This package is made for you if you have a lot of static pages (or pages that don't change very often). That means, portfolios, blogs, landing pages and more.

And it is highly customizable: You can even cache the same page for every user different, allowing that you can cache for example their account page or dashboard without worrying that another user can see these cached pages.

One benefit against much other html caches: It will also cache the pages based on language, and (optionally) user id. And if there are special cases (for example a specific session value) that needs to be used to generate multiple versions of the same page, the middleware can be easily modified.

Table of contents

1. Installation
2. Using
   2.1. For all web routes
   2.2. Only for specific routes
3. When will pages not be cached?
4. Configuration
   4.1. Enable / Disable cache
   4.2. Caching prefix
   4.3. Caching time
   4.4. User specific caching
5. Ignoring routes
6. Clear cache
7. Override middlware
8. Roadmap
9. License

Installation

The installation process is very straight-forward. It's like any other laravel package.

1. Add the package as a composer dependency by running the following command inside the console:

composer require jkniest/htmlcache

If you are using laravel 5.5 or higher the installation is already finished. You now have multiple ways to use the middleware (see Using).

Otherwise, if you use laravel 5.4 or lower go to step 2:

2. Add the package service provider in your packages configuration. Open up the config/app.php file and the following into your providers array:

'providers' => [
	// ...
	JKniest\HtmlCache\HtmlCacheServiceProvider::class,
	// ...
]

3. Done! Now you can use this middleware inside your project. You now have multiple ways to use the middleware (see Using)

Using

For all web routes

If you want to apply this middleware to every single web route (web route = no api route) you can add this to your global web middleware group.

Add the following line into your app/Http/Kernel.php file inside the middleware-group web variable:

protected $middlewareGroups = [
    'web' => [
        // ...
        \JKniest\HtmlCache\Http\Middleware\CacheHtml::class,
        // ...
    ],
    // ...
]

Now every single web-route uses the html cache. And it will just work! You don't have to do another thing. If you want to dig deeper (and maybe want to ignore some specific routes), see Configuration.

Only for specific routes

If you don't want to apply this middleware on any web-route you can use it only in specific routes or route-groups.

First you should add an alias to your app/Http/Kernel.php file:

protected $routeMiddleware = [
    // ...
    'htmlcache' => \JKniest\HtmlCache\Http\Middleware\CacheHtml::class
    // ...
]

Now you can define the middleware in routes or route groups:

Single Routes: (in routes/web.php)

Route::middleware('htmlcache')->get('/route', '[email protected]');

Route groups: (in routes/web.php)

Route::group(['middleware' => 'htmlcache'], function () {
    Route::get('/route', '[email protected]');
});

Controllers: (in app/Http/Controllers/...)

public function __construct()
{
    $this->middleware('htmlcache');
}

When will pages not be cached?

In a few cases the pages will not be cached:

1. If the HTTP method is not GET
2. If the HTMLCache is disabled in the configuration
3. If the path of the current page is ignored in the configuration
4. If there are validation errors
5. If the status code is not 200

Configuration

You can configure nearly anything inside the .env file.

Enable / Disable cache

Enable or disable the whole caching system. If this value is set to false no new pages will be cached and no old caches will be loaded.

HTML_CACHE_ENABLED=true

Caching prefix

A simple prefix that will be added to all cache keys. The default key is html_. So a cache key would look something like this: html_aboutus_en

HTML_CACHE_PREFIX="html_"

Caching time

The amount of minutes every single page should be cached. After these minutes the cache will be regenerated on the next page load. The default value is 360 Minutes (= 6 hours)

HTML_CACHE_MINUTES=360

User-Specific

If this value is set to true the cache key will contain the user id. If the user is not signed in, a -1 will be used instead (so each guest does share the cached result and every signed in user does have it's own cached version). This is useful if you want to cache user-specific pages, like a dashboard. The default value is false.

HTML_CACHE_USER_SPECIFIC=false

Ignoring routes

It is possible to ignore specific routes. You need to publish the default configuration by using this command:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=htmlcache

This will create a new file in your project: config/htmlcache.php. There you can configure any ignored routes by simply adding these to the ignored array:

    /**
     * HTML cache ignored routes
     */
    'ignored' => [
        '/admin',
        '/another/ignored/route',
    ]

Clear cache

The html cache package uses the default laravel cache helpers. So you can run the artisan command to clear the cache:

php artisan cache:clear

This will remove every cached version of this plugin (and also everything else). It is recommended to put this in your deployment workflow (for example in the deployment script in forge or as a deployment hook in envoyer)

Override middlware

It is possible to override the middleware. So you could override the cache-key generation. In this short tutorial we will add another field to the cache key generation (the current weekday).

Let's say you have a dashboard and all data on this dashboard will only update every weekday. In the default implementation you would have to set a maximum cache time (for example 1 day) but you can't be sure that the cache was generated exactly on 0am.

The simplest solution would be to override the middleware and extends the cache-key generation.

1. Create a new middleware inside the app/Http/Middleware folder. You can name it like you want.. in this case I will name it: HtmlCache.php

<?php

namespace App\Http\Middleware;

use Closure;

class HtmlCache extends \JKniest\HtmlCache\Http\Middleware\CacheHtml
{
    
}

Now we can override any methods. The method getCacheKey handles the generation of the cache key. The default implementation looks like this:

    protected function getCacheKey(string $page)
    {
        $prefix = config('htmlcache.prefix');
        $locale = app()->getLocale();

        $page = md5(trim($page, '/'));

        if (config('htmlcache.user_specific')) {
            $id = Auth::check() ? Auth::id() : -1;

            return "{$prefix}{$page}_{$locale}_{$id}";
        }

        return "{$prefix}{$page}_{$locale}";
    }

Let's implement our own (in the HtmlCache middleware that we just created):

    protected function getCacheKey(string $page)
    {
        $key = parent::getCacheKey($page);

        $key .= date('D');

        return $key;
    }

The last step is to register our own middleware as an alias or in the kernel file (instead of using the default implementation):

In app/Http/Kernel.php:

    protected $routeMiddleware = [
        // ...
        'htmlcache' => \App\Http\Middleware\HtmlCache::class,
        // ...
    ];

Of course you can always override any other method (like the Handle method itself).

License

Copyright Jordan Kniest

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.