Per Søderlind

<blockquote>
<p><strong>NOTE</strong> This plugin is not needed if you are running WordPress 6.5 or later, as the functionality <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/02/27/i18n-improvements-6-5-performant-translations/" rel="nofollow ugc">is built into WordPress core</a>. If you need to generate translation in the new <code>.l10n.php</code> format, use the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/performant-translations/" rel="ugc">Performant Translations</a> plugin instead.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a WordPress plugin that caches the .mo file as an PHP array, and <a href="https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.include.php" rel="nofollow ugc">include</a> the array instead of the .mo file.<br />
In theory, nothing is faster in PHP than loading and executing another PHP file.</p>
<h4>How it works</h4>
<p>If you have a plugin or theme that loads a textdomain, e.g. <code>load_textdomain( 'textdomain', $path_to_mo_file )</code>, then this plugin will:</p>
<ol>
<li>Look for a PHP version of the .mo file in <code>WP_CONTENT_DIR . '/cache/a-faster-load-textdomain'</code> directory.</li>
<li>If the PHP version exists, <a href="https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.include.php" rel="nofollow ugc">include</a> the file.</li>
<li>If the PHP version doesn’t exist, load the .mo file, and save the file as an PHP array in <code>wp-content/cache/a-faster-load-textdomain/</code> directory.</li>
</ol>
<p>The localized PHP array can be cached via <a href="http://blog.jpauli.tech/2015-03-05-opcache-html/" rel="nofollow ugc">PHP OPcache</a>. If you have PHP OPcache enabled, then the localized PHP array will be cached in memory, and the PHP file will not be parsed again.</p>
<h4>Filters</h4>
<pre><code>a_faster_load_textdomain_cache_path
</code></pre>
<p>Change the cache path, default is <code>WP_CONTENT_DIR . '/cache/a-faster-load-textdomain'</code>.</p>
<pre><code>add_filter( 'a_faster_load_textdomain_cache_path', function( $path ) {
    return WP_CONTENT_DIR . '/cache/my-cache';
} );
</code></pre>
<h4>GitHub</h4>
<p>The plugin source is available at <a href="https://github.com/soderlind/a-faster-load-textdomain/blob/main/a-faster-load-textdomain.php" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a></p>


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