PHP script executes faster in browser than in python/another PHP script - php

Question

I wrote an API in PHP. It executes pretty fast for my purpose (3s) when I call it using the browser. However if I call it using another PHP script (which i wrote to do testing) it takes a looong time (24s) for each request! I use curl to call the URL. Anybody knows whats happening ?
System Config :
Using WAMP to run the PHP.
Hosted on local computer.
Solutions tried :
Disabled all firewalls
Added the option curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_IPRESOLVE, CURL_IPRESOLVE_V4);
I even wrote a python script to call the PHP API and it also takes a long time. Seems like browser gives the best response time.
Any help is appreciated.
Updated with the code :
<?php
// Class to handle all Utilities
Class Utilities{
// Make a curl call to a URL and return both JSON & Array
public function callBing($bingUrl){
// Initiate curl
$ch = curl_init();
// Disable SSL verification
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
// Will return the response, if false it print the response
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
// Set the url
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$bingUrl);
// Performance Tweak
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_IPRESOLVE, CURL_IPRESOLVE_V4);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101026 Firefox/3.6.12');
session_write_close();
// Execute
$bingJSON=curl_exec($ch);
// Closing
curl_close($ch);
$bingArray = json_decode($bingJSON,true);
return array( "array" => $bingArray , "json" => $bingJSON );
}
}
?>
<?php
// The Test script
include_once('class/class.Utilities.php');
$util = new Utilities();
echo "<style> td { border : thin dashed black;}</style>";
// Test JSON
$testJSON = '
{
"data" : [
{ "A" : "24324" , "B" : "64767", "expectedValue" : "6.65" , "name" : "Test 1"},
{ "A" : "24324" , "B" : "65464", "expectedValue" : "14" , "name" : "Test 2"}
]
}
';
$testArray = json_decode($testJSON, TRUE);
echo "<h1> Test Results </h1>";
echo "<table><tr><th>Test name</th><th> Expected Value</th><th> Passed ? </th></tr>";
$count = count($testArray["data"]);
for ($i=0; $i < $count ; $i++) {
$url = "http://localhost/API.php?txtA=".urlencode($testArray["data"][$i]["A"])."&txtB=".urlencode($testArray["data"][$i]["B"]);
$result = $util->callutil($url);
if($testArray["data"][$i]["expectedValue"] == $result["value"])
$passed = true;
else
$passed = false;
if($passed)
$passed = "<span style='background:green;color: white;font-weight:bold;'>Passed</span>";
else
$passed = "<span style='background:red;color: white;font-weight:bold;'>Failed</span>";
echo "<tr><td>".$testArray["data"][$i]["name"]."</td><td>".$testArray["data"][$i]["expectedValue"]."</td><td>$passed</td></tr>";
}
echo "</table>";
?>

Answer 1

There is an overhead cost involved in starting up the interpreter and parsing the code (whether php, python, ruby, etc). When you have the code running in a server process that startup cost is payed when the server starts initially, and the application logic (plus some minor request/response overhead) is simply executed on the request. When running the code manually, however, that additional startup overhead happens before you code can be run and causes the slowness you are seeing. This is the reason that mod_php, and mod_wsgi exist (as opposed to frameworks that use the CGI api).