Caching in dbops

[aelzenaar]

Code like this:

  if year == None:
    years = []
    for item in db:
      if not(item['ts_year'] in years):
        years.append(item['ts_year'])
    return sorted(years)

Belongs on tdwtf (does anyone still read that? :o). Iterating through every item in the database just to enumerate the possible values of 'ts_year' tags? Really? We need to cache this, and every place where this kind of pattern occurs, before my database gets too big.

Possible implementation: add an additional table in the database to store [years/months/whatever], add a command-line to update it manually (based on iterating the full db), and update it whenever we add/update an article (i.e. check whether the year attached to the article is in the table, if not add it).