YII: Memcache or file caching? - yii

Question

I recently set up memcache for a website. However, getting memcache to work for designers and devs is always a pain. I want to switch to file caching. Can any of the other YII memory caching options beat Memcahce or at least perform more or less equivalently?
I'm considering using: http://www.yiiframework.com/doc/api/1.1/CFileCache

Answer 1

As mentioned, it somewhat depends if you need distributed caching and if you need the cache to be exactly the same on all environments. If you are already using a database and opening a data connection on most cases, you could use CDbCache.
I have a web application that is deployed on a few different environments and by different types of users, so I set a server environment variable to choose the cache system. Redis is the default for production (performance would be fairly similar to memcache but without the volatility) and CDbCache is the default for other environments, with the ability to choose APC if they have it or File if all else fails. In your config, you can set up something like:
if ($cache == 'redis') {
$cache_config = array(
'class' => 'packages.redis.ARedisCache');
} elseif ($cache == 'apc') {
$cache_config = array(
'class' => 'system.caching.CApcCache');
} elseif ($cache == 'file') {
$cache_config = array(
'class' => 'system.caching.CFileCache');
} else {
$cache_config = array(
'class'=>'system.caching.CDbCache',
'connectionID'=>'db'
);
}