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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-26T06:46:57+00:00

Every user on my site has a settings file hosted on the server. The

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Every user on my site has a settings file hosted on the server. The user can add and delete “items”, for which a reference of them is added to the settings list; therefore, it can become quite big if the user has many “items”. The specific question is: is it more efficient to store a file in a PHP Session or just access it for every page request.

I thought about using a database instead of a settings file; however, I thought it would be extremely inefficient since there would be one entry per item each user adds. But, would it still be more efficient to use SQL?

P.S: “items” are actually applications, but for the sake of not confusing, it was changed.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    SQL by itself is not very efficient, but the storage engine for sorting / filtering / presenting is. On the other hand the session is just a plain file in some kind of storage, meaning:

    • Use sessions storage if the data saved there has to be present on each page request, but unnecessary data will only cost you I/O time on RAM and HD.
    • Use SQL if you want to slice the data elegantly, but remember that php is actually executing another application through operating system calls.
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