The static keyword is useful outside of a OOP standpoint. You can quickly and easily implement 'memoization' or function caching with something as simple as:

<?php
function foo($arg1)
{
    static $cache;

    if( !isset($cache[md5($arg1)]) )
    {
        // Do the work here
        $cache[md5($arg1)] = $results;
    }

    return $cache[md5($arg1)];
}
?>

The static keyword creates a variable that persists only within the scope of that function past the execution. This technique is great for functions that hit the database like get_all_books_by_id(...) or get_all_categories(...) that you would call more than once during a page load.

Caveat: Make sure you find out the best way to make a key for your hash, in just about every circumstance the md5(...) above is NOT a good decision, I used it for illustrative purposes. sprintf('%u', crc32(...)) or spl_object_hash(...) may be much better depending on the context.

The static keyword is useful outside of a OOP standpoint. You can quickly and easily implement 'memoization' or function caching with something as simple as:

<?php
function foo($arg1)
{
    static $cache;

    if( !isset($cache[md5($arg1)]) )
    {
        // Do the work here
        $cache[md5($arg1)] = $results;
    }

    return $cache[md5($arg1)];
}
?>

The static keyword creates a variable that persists only within the scope of that function past the execution. This technique is great for functions that hit the database like get_all_books_by_id(...) or get_all_categories(...) that you would call more than once during a page load.

Caveat: Make sure you find out the best way to make a key for your hash, in just about every circumstance the md5(...) above is NOT a good decision (speed and output length issues), I used it for illustrative purposes. sprintf('%u', crc32(...)) or spl_object_hash(...) may be much better depending on the context.