Fastest method to save pageviews in database with doctrine - php

Question

Using Symfony 4 with doctrine, I want to save pageviews for one entity Program in the database. I want to save this to the database because I want to give some users the rights to view these numbers. What I have done is add a property to the entity like this:
Program.php
/**
* #ORM\Column(type="integer", nullable=true)
*/
private $pageViews;
/**
* #return mixed
*/
public function getPageViews()
{
return $this->pageViews;
}
/**
* #param mixed $pageViews
*/
public function setPageViews($pageViews)
{
$this->pageViews = $pageViews;
}
And in my ProgramController.php in the function showProgram
//...
$program->setPageViews($program->getPageViews()+1);
$em->persist($program);
$em->flush();
This works and adds 1 to the existing number every time the page is refreshed. My question is, is this an acceptable method or are there faster/better alternatives? And does this slow down performance or is that negligible?

Answer 1

Since you don't really need the entity you could directly do this with SQL, using Doctrine's connection:
$connection = $this->getDoctrine()->getConnection();
$connection->executeUpdate('UPDATE page_view_counter SET page_view = page_view+1;');
or using a preprared statement:
$connection = $this->getDoctrine()->getConnection();
$statement = $connection->prepare(
'UPDATE programs SET page_views = page_views + 1 WHERE programs.id = :id'
);
$statement->bindValue('id', $id);
$statement->execute();
This would speed up things a bit by not using some of the more complex features of the ORM that you don't need for your case.
Another alternative for speeding things up could be to switch technologies, like storing the data in a cache like redis. Whether this will actually improve performance (especially under a heavier load) would need to be verified using some measuring tool like JMeter.