Make variable globally available

[pwired]

Hi,

I have a simple counter on my home page template file, home.php,
that simply counts how many times the home web page is loaded.

$page->homepagehits += 1;
$page->of(false);
$page->save('homepagehits');
$page->of(true);

If I want to echo the value of this counter not only on the home page but on other pages as well,
I know that I can simply do it like this:

On the template file of the other page I put this:

$homepage = $pages->get('/'); 
$counter = $homepage->homepagehits;

and then on this other page I simpy do
<?php echo $counter ?>

Besides doing it this way, my question is, is there another way to make the value of $counter
globally available on all other pages ?

Maybe with an $Data array or something ?

 

[BitPoet]

2 hours ago, pwired said:

Besides doing it this way, my question is, is there another way to make the value of $counter
globally available on all other pages ?

Maybe with an $Data array or something ?

Not really. Since you have to store the value, you also need to load the page it is attached whenever you want to read it. PHP provides no built-in persistent storage that reaches across sessions and is shared between individual threads/processes. If you want to avoid the overhead of loading $homepage and the counter for every page view, you could however use a memory cache like memcached or APC, update that when the counter is incremented and read from it when viewing other pages (or fall back to $homepage if its not yet set, e.g. after a server restart).

[kongondo]

...Or if you use _init.php, define $homepage there and it will be available in all your template files :-).

Edited October 5, 2018 by kongondo
typo: should be _init.php (NOT init.php)

[pwired]

Thanks for your tips. I have $homepage already defined in the _init.php. Never thought it would work to put the value of $counter there too. I will try and see if it works.

[pwired]

Just tried it, and yes I can confirm, it is working.

Like Kongondo suggested, I have now put this line

$counter = $homepage->homepagehits;

on both the _init.php prepend file and on the home.php template file

Now <php echo $counter ?> shows the correct value on all the other pages as well.

I can use this way of storing values for other cases as well.
Thanks

[Pixrael]

maybe is more efficient to use: $config-> homepagehits .. increment it by 1 at home.php template file and later echo it at any template file.. you never need to query any additional page (homepage) to get that counter because $config is present always by default at your hand.. hummm.. is this correct?

[pwired]

Hi Pixrael,

Quote

you never need to query any additional page (homepage) to get that counter

Thanks for stepping in on this. We´ll, with this line  $counter = $homepage->homepagehits;  on both the _init.php and home.php I now already have the value of $counter globally available. No need to query for it anymore. Great way for storing values also for other cases and make them globally available. Not sure how $config-> homepagehits could be more efficient.

 

[Pixrael]

Forget it, it was just an idea. I think it doesn't work. That is why ask at the end of the paragraph