What are the potential consequences of not implementing caching in PHP when making API requests?

Without implementing caching in PHP when making API requests, the application may experience slow response times and increased server load due to repeated requests for the same data. Caching can help improve performance by storing the API response locally and serving it from the cache instead of making a new request each time. 

// Example of implementing caching in PHP using file-based caching

// Set cache expiration time
$cache_expiration = 3600; // 1 hour

// Generate a unique cache key based on the API endpoint and parameters
$cache_key = md5('api_endpoint_' . serialize($params));

// Check if the cached data exists and is still valid
$cached_data = file_get_contents('cache/' . $cache_key);
if ($cached_data && (filemtime('cache/' . $cache_key) > time() - $cache_expiration)) {
    // Serve the cached data
    $response = json_decode($cached_data, true);
} else {
    // Make the API request
    $response = make_api_request($params);

    // Cache the API response
    file_put_contents('cache/' . $cache_key, json_encode($response));
}

// Use the API response data
var_dump($response);

Keywords

caching PHP API requests performance latency

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