I have a simple followers/following system set up within my app.
What would be the best way to store a complete array of 'users following' during a session so that I don't have to query the database multiple times throughout.
To clarify: When a user logs in once they have been authorized I query the database, get a full list of users that the logged in user is following and ultimately store it as a JavaScript variable. This way throughout the site, as the user navigates around I can constantly check the following status against any other user they may come across.
This query is only performed once when the user loads the full page, while navigating around it is not repeated.
This works well for javascript generated content i.e user hovercards etc...
However I would like to store this array (of only userid's) in PHP itself so that I can prevent further queries to the following table while generating content server side that requires a 'follower/following' check to be performed.
What would be the best way to do this?
Please bare in mind that the results are cached in memcached but if I can avoid any lookups at all and have a consistent array to check against that would be great.
Thanks in advance