How can caching responses in PHP help alleviate time pressure when working with web services?

Caching responses in PHP can help alleviate time pressure when working with web services by storing the responses locally and serving them from the cache instead of making repeated requests to the web service. This can reduce the load on the web service, decrease response times, and improve the overall performance of the application.

// Check if the response is cached
$cacheKey = 'web_service_response_' . md5($url);
$cacheTime = 3600; // Cache for 1 hour

if ($cachedResponse = apc_fetch($cacheKey)) {
    // Serve the cached response
    echo $cachedResponse;
} else {
    // Make the request to the web service
    $response = file_get_contents($url);

    // Cache the response
    apc_store($cacheKey, $response, $cacheTime);

    // Serve the response
    echo $response;
}