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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-26T07:11:41+00:00

I am trying to create some sort of new filesystem for a PHP cache-serving

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I am trying to create some sort of new “filesystem” for a PHP cache-serving class. What I’m trying to achieve out of it, is the ability to detect which images are unique to each referrer URL from the site, through a MVC pattern type call to each image. Then to cache that, I want to pack every image into a single file, by utilizing PHP sessions. I’ll work out a system to determine with a session needs to be started, stream each image, and handle each http header. This is where it gets tricky.

So for example, say I have a url that loads a list of movie covers from localhost/images/moviecovers/movietitle001.jpg. I have it set up so each image would be loaded from images.php, with the rest of the URL as attributes. So it’s actually really easy to find out a complete list of images explicit to an HTTP referrer of localhost/media/movies/1.

I want to pack and group lists of images that are determined to frequently be called from a specific referrer on the site. I’ll probably make use of PHP sessions for this, by creating a session handler, and manipulating session names/ids/paths for organization. I haven’t done many benchmark tests, but I believe this is an efficient sorting system that’s extremely easy to work with.

It could allow me to do some sort of file structure like (with any other information that I might need):

//Unique to referrer of /images/moviecovers/...
$_SESSION = array(
    'image1'=>array(
        'type'=>'jpg',
        'modtime'=>filemtime(),
        'content'=>raw_image_data
    ),
    'image2'=>array(
        'type'=>'png',
        'modtime'=>filemtime(),
        'content'=>raw_image_data
    ),
    'image3'=>array(
        'type'=>'gif',
        'modtime'=>filemtime(),
        'content'=>raw_image_data
    ),
    ...
);

Ultimately, the goal is to make it so that I only need to open 2-3 files for a large list of images, but I need to find out how I’m going to keep those single files open throughout the entire client’s load. It should be easy to detect when a session needs to to be started, but the plan fails if I have to keep starting the session for each image that will be loaded. I’m not even sure where to begin on handling this type of thing in PHP, or if it’s even possible. I don’t necessarily need help with the design/framework, I need help and ideas with how I’m going to serve each request.

Even if it isn’t possible in PHP and since everyone knows of my plans, I’d also like some advice on why this would or wouldn’t be a good idea. Eventually, I might try making this in Node.JS, which I’m confident would have no problem handling
this type of thing. It’s one of those things I’d like to try, but have no idea if I would get any increase load quickness.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    How large is your raw image data. If it is large, all you are doing is trading memory usage for CPU usage.

    Also, you might need to be concern that PHP, on 32bit platforms can only use upto 1.5Gb of ram per request. (unless they have fixed it in newer versions).

    So this will restrict the number of images you can cache in the file. So I don really think it is a good idea to do so.

    With harddisk speed increasing and cost per gigabyte so low, what is the reason to cache it?

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