Posted by Evert | Rooftop Solutions on 10/21/69 11:15

trlists@clayst.com wrote:

>On 8 May 2005 Evert | Rooftop Solutions wrote:
>
>
>
>>What I really need is a fast lookup mechanism, to 'translate'
>>statements.
>>
>>For example:
>>
>>setOutputType('xhtml');
>>echo(translate('authorstart'));
>>
>>the function translate opens xhtml.data, which contains:
>>
>>authorstart : <span class="author">
>>authorend : </span>
>>
>>so, the translate function looks 'authorstart' up and returns '<span
>>class="author">'
>>
>>or if you had specified 'wml' as the outputtype, the file could like like:
>>
>>authorstart : <b>
>>authorend : </b>
>>
>>and the function would return '<b>'
>>
>>This is all no problem, except that these lists can be pretty big. And I
>>wouldn't like to load them all into the memory, or have to loop through
>>the file every time translate is called.
>>
>>So I need a very fast mechanism to overcome this problem.
>>
>>
>
>I think it's called a database. The fields are outputtype, key, and
>text to output, with an index on outputtype + key, then you do
>something like this:
>
> select OutputText from TranslateTable where OutputType = 'wml'
> and key = 'authorstart';
>
>I wonder how many of these you really have. If on each script
>invocation you will be looking up many of them (dozens or hundreds) it
>might be more efficient to load all the ones for the outputtype you are
>using into a PHP array at the start, whether that's in a hard-coded
>array or loaded from the database. If you're only looking up a couple
>then a separate database lookup for each one is probably more
>efficient.
>
>
Yes I thought of this, but in my case a flat file would be better. The
same problem applies though:
[quote]
This is all no problem, except that these lists can be pretty big. And I
wouldn't like to load them all into the memory, or have to loop through
the file every time translate is called.
[/quote]

I don't know how much lookups there will be (can either be many or some)
and I need the fastest solution there is, because the function _can_ be
called loads of times. I think it will be hundreds per page, and
thousands in total.

I'm already thinking of cache mechanisms, because it has to work
efficiently on very high loads.

>Incidentally I would say this is not a templating problem. It's simply
>a translation or lookup problem.
>
>
>
True =)

grt,
Evert

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