What resources or documentation can help in understanding and implementing caching for generated images in PHP?

Caching generated images in PHP can help improve performance by reducing the load on the server and decreasing load times for users. To implement caching for generated images in PHP, you can use a combination of server-side caching techniques like storing images in a temporary directory and client-side caching by setting appropriate cache control headers.

// Check if the image exists in the cache directory
$cacheFileName = 'cache/' . md5($imageSource) . '.jpg';

if (file_exists($cacheFileName)) {
    // Output the cached image
    header('Content-Type: image/jpeg');
    readfile($cacheFileName);
} else {
    // Generate the image
    $image = imagecreatefromjpeg($imageSource);
    
    // Save the generated image to the cache directory
    imagejpeg($image, $cacheFileName);
    
    // Output the generated image
    header('Content-Type: image/jpeg');
    imagejpeg($image);
    
    // Clean up
    imagedestroy($image);
}