Log/Graph PHP execution time - php

Are there any tools available to log the page load time for a php site?
Mainly looking for something that I can see trends of load times over time, I was considering dumping them into a file using error_log(), but I don't know what I could use to parse it and display graphs

You can record the microtime at the start of execution, hold that variable until the end, check the time, subtract them, and there you have your execution time. Output buffering will be required to make this work in most cases, unless it's a situation in which a particular thing always runs last (like footer()).
$time_start = microtime_float();
function microtime_float() {
list($usec, $sec) = explode(" ", microtime());
return ((float)$usec + (float)$sec);
}
//at the start.
//at the end:
$time_end = microtime_float();
$time = round($time_end - $time_start, 4);
echo "Last uncached content render took $time seconds";

Use the Firebug extension for Firefox, it has a Net panel that shows you load times.
If you want to do load testing, apache comes with a utility called apache bench, try ab --help in a console window near you.

See PEAR Benchmark. It allows you to add benchmarks into your code. You can have it dump an HTML table on your pages, or you can loop through the data and write to a log file.

Related

PHP: "run" file/script rather than include?

I have a php file that returns html based on certain parameters, but it also saves this output in a separate directory (basically a custom made caching process).
Now I want to build a separate php file that automatically updates the cache based on array of known possible parameters.
So I want to "load" or "run" rather than "include" the file several times with the different parameters so that it will save the results in the cache folder.
Is there a php function that will allow me to simply load this other file and perhaps tell me when it is done? If not, do I need to use ajax for something like this or maybe PHP's curl library??
At the present I was thinking about something along the following lines:
<?php
$parameters = array("option1", "option2", "option3");
//loop through parameters and save to cache folder
foreach ($parameters as $parameter){
//get start time to calculate process time
$time_start = microtime(true);
sleep(1);
//I wish there was some function called run or load similar to jquery's 'load'
run("displayindexsearch.php?p=$parameter");
//return total time that it took to run the script and save to cache
$time_end = microtime(true);
$time = $time_end - $time_start;
echo "Process Time: {$time} seconds";
}
?>
why don't you include the file, but create functions for the things you want to do inside the file. That way, at the time when you want to run, you simply call the function. This seems to be the correct way to do what you are trying to do if I understand it correctly.
The best solution I found is to use:
file_get_contents($url)
So where the questions looks for a replacement for run, I substitute file_get_contents($url).
Note that I was getting errors when I used a relative path here. I only had success when I used http://localhost/displayindexsearch.php?p=parameter etc.
Please take a look at this question.
Launch php file from php as background process without exec()
It might be helping for you.

Eclipse PHP Profiler - How Do You Get Parameters?

Using Eclipse's PHP Profiler, I have discovered a bottleneck in my code on a method that is called many times. The problem is that I cannot tell what parameters were passed in to the method to determine how to reproduce the symptom.
I have tried surrounding the code that the profiler is reporting as taking a full second to complete with the following:
$startTime = microtime(true);
$safe_text = wp_check_invalid_utf8( $text );
$endTime = microtime(true);
$time = $endTime - $startTime;
if ($time > .05) {
error_log('Time: ' . $time . ' text [' . $text . ']');
}
I never have a single hit in the error log for this, yet the profiler will continue to report one as taking a full second to complete. Refreshing the page in the browser does indicate that there is significant slowness.
I have this same problem in 3 different areas of my code and knowing what was being passed in to the methods at the time they run slowly may be of assistance in fixing the problem. Is there any way to determine what is being passed in to the intermittently slow method when it is running slowly?
It is possible to set this up using xdebug which is what Eclipse uses for profiling, however it's disabled by default because recording this data in a project that makes a lot of calls or passes large data structures would quickly overwhelm your available memory.
I recommend you do manual logging as you are currently doing although I'd start by measuring the total time of all calls to wp_check_invalid_utf8 to make sure you do infact have a problem in just that part and that is isn't just a problem caused by the Eclipse profiler itself. Once you've established the total time is more than you would like, then start logging individual calls and their parameters.

best way to measure (and refine) performance with PHP?

A site I am working with is starting to get a little sluggish, and I would like to refine it. I think the problem is with the PHP, but I can't be sure. How can I see how long functions are taking to perform?
If you want to test the execution time :
<?php
$startTime = microtime(true);
// Your content to test
$endTime = microtime(true);
$elapsed = $endTime - $startTime;
echo "Execution time : $elapsed seconds";
?>
Try the profiler feature in XDebug or Zend Debugger?
Two things you can do.
place Microtime calls everywhere although its not convenient if you want to test more than one function. So there is a simpler way to do it a better solution if you want to test many functions which i assume you would like to do.
just have a class (click on link to follow tutorial) where you can test how long all your functions take. Rather than place microtime everywhere. you just use this class. which is very convenient
http://codeaid.net/php/calculate-script-execution-time-%28php-class%29
the second thing you can do is to optimize your script is by taking a look at the memory usage.
By observing the memory usage of your scripts, you may be able optimize your code better.
PHP has a garbage collector and a pretty complex memory manager. The amount of memory being used by your script. can go up and down during the execution of a script. To get the current memory usage, we can use the memory_get_usage() function, and to get the highest amount of memory used at any point, we can use the memory_get_peak_usage() function.
view plaincopy to clipboardprint?
echo "Initial: ".memory_get_usage()." bytes \n";
/* prints
Initial: 361400 bytes
*/
// let's use up some memory
for ($i = 0; $i < 100000; $i++) {
$array []= md5($i);
}
// let's remove half of the array
for ($i = 0; $i < 100000; $i++) {
unset($array[$i]);
}
echo "Final: ".memory_get_usage()." bytes \n";
/* prints
Final: 885912 bytes
*/
echo "Peak: ".memory_get_peak_usage()." bytes \n";
/* prints
Peak: 13687072 bytes
*/
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/9-useful-php-functions-and-features-you-need-to-know/
PK
You can also make it manually, by recording microtime() value in various places, like this:
<?
$TIMER['start']=microtime(TRUE);
// some code
$query="SELECT ...";
$TIMER['before q']=microtime(TRUE);
$res=mysql_query($query);
$TIMER['after q']=microtime(TRUE);
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($res)) {
// some code
}
$TIMER['array filled']=microtime(TRUE);
// some code
$TIMER['pagination']=microtime(TRUE);
/and so on
?>
and then visualize it
<?
if ('127.0.0.1' === $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']) {
echo "<table border=1><tr><td>name</td><td>so far</td><td>delta</td><td>per cent</td></tr>";
reset($TIMER);
$start=$prev=current($TIMER);
$total=end($TIMER)-$start;
foreach($TIMER as $name => $value) {
$sofar=round($value-$start,3);
$delta=round($value-$prev,3);
$percent=round($delta/$total*100);
echo "<tr><td>$name</td><td>$sofar</td><td>$delta</td><td>$percent</td></tr>";
$prev=$value;
}
echo "</table>";
}
?>
an IP address check implies that we are doing this profiling on the working site
Though I doubt it's PHP itself. Most likely it's database. So, pay most attention to query execution timing.
however, a "site" term is very broad. It includes also JS, CSS, images and stuff. So, I'd suggest to start form FirebFug's Net page to see what part of whole page takes more time.
Of course, refining can be done only after analysis of profiling results, and cannot be advised here without it.
Your best bet is Xdebug. Im happy as it comes bundled in my PHPed IDE. I can get profiler data at the click of a button.
So maybe you could consider that.
I had similar issues and so I created 2 new tables on the database and two new functions. One was audit_sql and the other was audit_code. Because I used an SQL abstraction class it was easy to time every single SQL call (I used php microtime as some others have suggested). So, I called microtime before and after the SQL call and stored the results on the database.
Similarly with pages. I called microtime at the start and end of each page and if necessary at the start and end of functons, divs - whatever I thought might be a culprit.
The general results were:
SQL calls to MySQL were almost instantaneous and were nto a problem at all. The only thing I would say is that even I was surprised at the number being executed! The site is generated from the database - even the menus, permissions etc. To produce the home page the SQL calls were measured in the 100s.
PHP was not the culprit. This was even more instantaneous that MySQL.
The culprit was.... (big build up!) calls to You Tube and Picassa and other sites like that. I host videos and photo albums on the site (well, I don't actually store them - they are stored on YT etc.) and on the home page are thumbnails that are extracted from You Tube and the like via the You Tube PHP API/Zend Framework. Because this is all http based to the other sites, each one was taking 1, 2 or 3 seconds. This was causing those divs containing these to take between 6 and 12 seconds and the home page up to 17 seconds.
The solution - store all thumbnails on my server. The first time one has to be served from the remote site (YT, Picassa etc.) so do that and then store it on your own site. Future times, you check if you have it and if so serve it always from your server. Cuts the page load time down to 2-3 seconds tops. Granted the first person to view the first home page load after someone has loaded more videos/images will take some time, but not thereafter. People will put a long one-off page load time down to their connection/the internet in general. Too many slow loads of your site and they will stop visiting!
I hope that helps somewhat.

Testing server load time with PHP?

Is there a way to determine how long it takes a web page, and all it's content, to load with PHP?
I have already tried this:
$time_start = microtime(true);
(All the content of the web page here)
$time_end = microtime(true);
$time = $time_end - $time_start;
echo $time;
However, the problem with this (as far as I can tell) is that I'm only calculating the time it takes the php script to execute. This doesn't factor in any images or videos that are on the page.
Is there a way to determine how long it takes a web page to load including images or videos using php?
Basically what I'm trying to do is test the speed of my server with out factoring in my connection speed.
You need to download firebug and then open the "net" tab and wait for the page to finish loading and it will show you the total load time of all requests.
You might consider ab (ApacheBench). It's for testing the performance of your web server, but you can run it against a particular URL if you're just concerned about one page. One advantage is that it can run from the command line and issue multiple requests in parallel, enabling you to do some kind of load testing.
If you want to factor in how long it takes to actually load on the browser, you'll need some kind of javascript solution. One approach with code is presented in the article, Optimizing Page Load Time, which is worth reading.
Google Chrome has an amazing Audit tool built in which gives a good list of ways to improve a given site as far as speed goes.
alt text http://far.id.au/audit.png
try this
// top of the page --
<?php
$time = microtime();
$time = explode(' ', $time);
$time = $time[1] + $time[0];
$start = $time;
?>
// end of the page --
<?php
$time = microtime();
$time = explode(' ', $time);
$time = $time[1] + $time[0];
$finish = $time;
$total_time = round(($finish - $start), 4);
echo 'Page generated in '.$total_time.' seconds.';
?>
You can either use the NavigationTiming API (https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webperf/raw-file/tip/specs/NavigationTiming2/Overview.html) and beacon the timings back - this is how boomerang works (https://github.com/lognormal/boomerang)
Alternatively use a synthetic test tool like webpagetest.org to gather timings from various browsers/locations/network variations

How does session_start lock in PHP?

Originally, I just want to verify that session_start locks on session. So, I create a PHP file as below. Basically, if the pageview is even, the page sleeps for 10 seconds; if the pageview is odd, it doesn't. And, session_start is used to obtain the page view in $_SESSION.
I tried to access the page in two tabs of one browser. It is not surprising that the first tab takes 10 seconds since I explicitly let it sleep. The second tab would not sleep, but it should be blocked by sessiont_start. That works as expected.
To my surprise, the output of the second page shows that session_start takes almost no time. Actually, the whole page seems takes no time to load. But, the page does take 10 seconds to show in browser.
obtained lock
Cost time: 0.00016689300537109
Start 1269739162.1997
End 1269739162.1998
allover time elpased : 0.00032305717468262
The page views: 101
Does PHP extract session_start out of PHP page and execute it before other PHP statements?
This is the code.
<?php
function float_time()
{
list($usec, $sec) = explode(' ', microtime());
return (float)$sec + (float)$usec;
}
$allover_start_time = float_time();
$start_time = float_time();
session_start();
echo "obtained lock<br/>";
$end_time = float_time();
$elapsed_time = $end_time - $start_time;
echo "Cost time: $elapsed_time <br>";
echo "Start $start_time<br/>";
echo "End $end_time<br/>";
ob_flush();
flush();
if (isset($_SESSION['views']))
{
$_SESSION['views'] += 1;
}
else
{
$_SESSION['views'] = 0;
}
if ($_SESSION['views'] % 2 == 0)
{
echo "sleep 10 seconds<br/>";
sleep(10);
}
$allover_end_time = float_time();
echo "allover time elpased : " . ($allover_end_time - $allover_start_time) . "<br/>";
echo "The page views: " . $_SESSION['views'];
?>
That seems to be a firefox related "issue". If you request the same url in two tabs/windows the second request waits until the first request is finished (could also be an addon that blocks the second request, haven't tested that).
Take e.g.
<?php // test.php
$start = microtime(true);
echo "<pre>start: $start</pre>";
sleep(5);
$end = microtime(true);
echo '<pre>', $start, "\n", $end, "\n", $end-$start, '</pre>';
I called it twice and the output was
start: 1269742677.6094
1269742677.6094
1269742682.609
4.9995958805084
and
start: 1269742682.6563
1269742682.6563
1269742687.6557
4.9994258880615
Note that there's already a 5 second gap between the start times.
When called as http://localhost/test.php and http://localhost/test.php?a=b instead of the exact same url twice this does not happen.
Both IE8 and Chrome do not show that behavior.
Yes, This could be because of session_start() blocking other requests in the same session (file based). I was able to verify the issue in Firefox(4.x) and Chrome(10.x) in Windows XP/PHP 5.2 with default session handler(file). I am not sure if this issue is reproducible for non-file session handlers.
obtained lock
**Cost time: 9.90100598335**
Start 1303227658.67
End 1303227668.57
sleep 10 seconds
allover time elpased : 19.9027831554
The page views: 4
This is a very interesting issue and the Firefox tab locking described in the above answer would have eclipsed this one from being detected.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.session-start.php#101452
Since php does not have a container. How do two calls to same session get serialized? Who does this? How do the two processes talk? Is PHP module always active and only spawning threads after doing session check? In that case the PHP module is indeed behaving like a container that is, in this case, providing session management service to this extent.

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