Any tips for speeding up PHP scripts..?

[ElbertF]

Since phpBB inspired me to start learning PHP, and eventually starting my own business as a programmer, I might aswell post this here.

I'm developing a CMS right now with a lot or functions similar to the ones used in phpBB, such as an advanced template parser, BBCode, search engine, etc.. I already integrated some functionality which I 'stole' from this new version in development. The devs here are way ahead of me though, they managed to keep the board up to speed by caching templates for instance.

Now I wonder, what can I do to speed up my scripts? What slows them down (although my average parse time is about the same as it is here)? Should I store image info in the DB and not in a file? Should I use less preg_replace() functions? Any ideas would be more then welcome!

[Uchiha Nick]

first- reduce the total queries as much as you can.
second - preg_replace > str_replace, this simply replaces it immediately, str_replace first looks and then replaces. + Regex are sweet ( BBCode, Smilleys etc. )
third - caching is a good one, rather hard to apply correct though.
fourth - sessions, try to use the least possible amount of sessions. although this is better then cookies- cookies are evil itself !
fifth - OOP. object orientated programming- this cuts down a lot- since it only uses whats needed, nothing more and nothing less
sixth - try to create normalised databases ( whats it called in EN? ) relational etc.. LEFT and RIGHT joins
seventh - try not to overdo on total code- the more code thats required, the longer it takes. IE working with vars.

Code: Select all

// this method is a bit.. useless, since it takes up memory- which in turn takes speed
$var = $_POST['var'];
$_SESSION['var'] = $var;

// this method however- cuts back a little- but count each time you do this, and you [b]will[/b] notice quite a change
$_SESSION['var'] = $_POST['var'];

// only use the first method if you want to apply some functions to it

hope it helps

[Yawnster]

http://www.lerdorf.com/tips.pdf" target="_blank
http://www.php.lt/benchmark/phpbench.php" target="_blank
http://phplens.com/lens/php-book/optimi ... ng-php.php" target="_blank

Just a few I have found rather useful...

Yawnster

[ElbertF]

Thanks, that's very useful

I didn´t find the article on phplens.com very useful (I´ve read it before), since my sites usually aren´t hosted on my own server and I don´t have any influence on that. But foreach() vs. while(list()=each()) etc. is pretty interesting

[Dog Cow]

There are at least 2 different PHP accelerators that can be installed on a server. I'm not sure what they are called, but someone else may know.

[ElbertF]

Like Zend? Anyway, as I said I'm only interested in optimising my programming right now..

[uranusalien]

Try eAccelerator.

[shawMart]

optimize that code!