Multiple Caches Per Page

You can have multiple cache files for a single call to display() or fetch(). Let's say that a call to display('index.tpl') may have several different output contents depending on some condition, and you want separate caches for each one. You can do this by passing a cache_id as the second parameter to the function call.

require('Smarty.class.php');
$smarty = new Smarty;

$smarty->caching = true;

$my_cache_id = $_GET['article_id'];

$smarty->display('index.tpl',$my_cache_id);

Above, we are passing the variable $my_cache_id to display() as the cache_id. For each unique value of $my_cache_id, a separate cache will be generated for index.tpl. In this example, "article_id" was passed in the URL and is used as the cache_id.

Be sure to pass the same cache_id as the second parameter to is_cached() and clear_cache().

require('Smarty.class.php');
$smarty = new Smarty;

$smarty->caching = true;

$my_cache_id = $_GET['article_id'];

if(!$smarty->is_cached('index.tpl',$my_cache_id)) {
	// No cache available, do variable assignments here.
	$contents = get_database_contents();
	$smarty->assign($contents);
}

$smarty->display('index.tpl',$my_cache_id);

You can clear all caches for a particular cache_id by passing null as the first parameter to clear_cache().

require('Smarty.class.php');
$smarty = new Smarty;

$smarty->caching = true;

// clear all caches with "sports" as the cache_id
$smarty->clear_cache(null,"sports");

$smarty->display('index.tpl',"sports");

In this manner, you can "group" your caches together by giving them the same cache_id.