Caching

Why cache

To find your filters, the package reads the attributes of the model's methods every time the queryString() scope runs. The cost is small, but in production you can skip it by caching the filters of all your models:

php artisan querystring:cache

The command writes the map of every model's filters to bootstrap/cache/querystring.php. To remove it:

php artisan querystring:clear

Laravel's optimize command

The cache is part of Laravel's optimize command, so if your deployment already runs it there is nothing to add:

php artisan optimize        # also runs querystring:cache
php artisan optimize:clear  # also runs querystring:clear

Regenerating the cache

While the cache exists, the package doesn't read the attributes anymore: it uses the cached map. Regenerate it whenever you add, rename or remove a filter, or add the trait to a new model. Otherwise the change has no effect.

In local development you usually don't need the cache at all. If you run optimize locally, remember to clear it before working on filters.

The command removes the previous cache before generating the new one. If generating fails, for example because a model throws an exception in its constructor, no cache is left and filters are read from the attributes again.

Which models are cached

The command looks for models under your application's app directory. A model is included when it:

• extends Eloquent's Model;
• uses the UseQueryString trait directly in its own class.

Models that inherit the trait from a parent class or receive it through another trait are not found. Use the trait on each concrete model. An abstract model that uses the trait makes the command fail, because it can't be instantiated.

To cache it, the command creates each model with new and calls its getQueryStringObject() method, so the cached filters are those of the object returned at that moment.

To scan a different directory, pass its namespace and path as declared in the autoload.psr-4 section of composer.json:

php artisan querystring:cache --namespace="Domain\\" --path=src/Domain

Each run replaces the whole cache with the models of the given directory.