Posted by Al on 09/26/04 11:22

Aiguo Fei wrote:
> In ASP.Net there is the concept of "application" which is a virtual
> directory on a Web server. An application can have application-wide
> shared data/objects, which can be accessed by any script of that
> application (i.e., scripts under the virtual directory). I have gone
> through several PHP books, haven't seen it mentioned anywhere that PHP
> has similar facility. I don't know if anyone has written an extention
> to do something similar. Or any experience/suggestion on this matter.
>
> To make it clear, consider the following example. I want to do
> web-based dictionary. To achieve good performance, I want to load the
> whole dictionary into memory when the "application" starts (e.g., when
> the web server starts, or triggered when the first script under a
> certain directory is requested), and build a lookup table; then create
> a globally-accessible object, let's say, Application["my_dict"]; and
> it provides a function to do the dictionary lookup. In a script, one
> could do something like:
>
> $definition=Application["my_dict"]->lookup( $word );
>
> For a complete solution, it should support object locking/exclusive
> access as well.


I think you'll the solution to your problem in "Advanced PHP Programing" by Geo Schlossnagle.

It covers large-scale Web sites in depth.

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