hey,
for performance reasons i want to cache (template) variables using
memcache, making access to data easy in templates by using a simple
syntax like <%=users(2).name%>. this actually should tell the view to
load the field ‘name’ from the model/table ‘users’ with id=2. it first
tries memcache and if not found, loads the data from the and stores it
in memcache.
has anyone done this before, any ready to use plugins available? :).
if not, any ideas/suggestions on how to implement this best in ror?
caching partials or whole actions is not an option because of too
complex dependencies.
thanks
in your config/environment/development.rb file (or whatever
environement your are configuring)
config.cache_store = :mem_cache_store
Depending on how much memory you want to consume you can either load
your whole user model, the name to ID collection or just the users
that log in.
In the User model do something like:
def self.names
Rails.cache.fetch(‘user_names’, :expires_in => 3600)
{User.all.collect {|u| [u.id,u.name]}} # names are cached for 1hr
(3600 seconds)
end
again in your controller:
def list
@names ||= User.names.sort
end
in your view:
<% @names.each do |name| -%>
<%= name[0] -%>
<% end -%>
If the names aren’t cached or the cache is older than the one hour
defined in the model then the fetch method knows to go grab them
afresh.
I’m using memcache in a more complex manner with full objects and it
works like a charm - as a matter of fact this has taken common
requests for fetching data completely off of the database. I rebuild
the cache without using expiration by implementing callbacks on
modification of the underlying data - this has taken load times for
data intensive / cmplex data sets from 20+ seconds down to an
imperceivable delay… makes clients happy to see that kind of
improvement. 
Naturally you will need to have the memcache service running somewhere
in your environment.
Hope that helps
Ben
Except in the collection you actually would put [u.name,u.id]