Installing Heisencache

Theory of operation

Heisencache is a Drupal 7 cache plugin. As such, it is implemented within a module package and is not a module itself. The sole role of the module is to provide an administrative UI at some point.

Heisencache works by intercepting ALL cache settings and inserting itself as a transparent proxy in front of the other caches, which it invokes on behalf of the client code invoking cache operations.

Note that this plugin requires PHP >= 5.3.

Installation example

In order to do this, the Heisencache cache plugin must be inserted into the site settings file (settings.php) as the last cache setting. Typically, this means that the bottom of settings.php should look like this, assuming Redis is used as the main cache plugin.

# Configure other caches as if Heisencache was not there.
$conf['cache_default_class']         = 'Redis_Cache';
$conf['cache_class_cache_form']      = 'DrupalDatabaseCache';
$conf['cache_class_cache_update']    = 'DrupalDatabaseCache';
$conf['cache_backends'][]            = 'sites/all/modules/contrib/redis/redis.autoload.inc';

# Then override the configuration: declare the plugin, load it, and invoke it.
$conf['cache_backends'][] = 'sites/all/modules/contrib/heisencache/heisencache.inc';

Configuration

The plugin can be configured per-site by implementing a settings.heisencache.inc file in the site settings directory. Copy default.settings.heisencache.inc to the site settings directory, and edit it to add configuration of your choice, following the examples in that file.

Your configuration will most of the time involve:

• registering a number of event Subscribers, like MissSubscriber
• registering one WriterSubscriber, passing it the events emitted by all the subscribers you registered previously, plus the onShutdown event to trigger writes only once per page, on shutdown.
• supplied WriterSubscriber classes:
  • The WatchdogWriterSubscriber does not need the Heisencache module, but cannot log cache events on cached pages.
  • The SqlWriterSubscriber can log events on cached pages, but needs the Heisencache module to be enabled.

Running tests

The plugin is testable with PHPUnit. If you installed it in sites/all/modules/contrib/heisencache, you do not need to modify the PHPunit configuration file and you can run tests directly from the module base directory. Otherwise:

• copy phpunit.xml.dist to phpunit.xml
• modify the HEISENCACHE_DRUPAL_BASE value to point to the Drupal base directory.
• run PHPunit like: phpunit src