Profiling PHP with Xdebug and WINCacheGrind

Ok..so this is really short, no BS tutorial, on how to profile your PHP application under windows

Step 1
Download windows modules for your version of PHP from http://www.xdebug.org/

Step 2
Write this lines at your php.ini file

zend_extension_ts="c:/wamp/php/ext/php_xdebugXXXXXXX.dll"
; general settings
xdebug.auto_trace=0
xdebug.collect_includes=1
xdebug.collect_params=1
xdebug.collect_return=0
xdebug.default_enable=1
xdebug.extended_info=1
xdebug.show_local_vars=1
xdebug.show_mem_delta=1
xdebug.max_nesting_level=100
xdebug.trace_format=0
xdebug.trace_output_dir="c:/XXXXXXXX/"
xdebug.trace_options=0
xdebug.trace_output_name=timestamp

; debugger settings
xdebug.remote_autostart=0
xdebug.remote_enable=1
xdebug.remote_handler=dbgp
xdebug.remote_host=127.0.0.1
xdebug.remote_mode=req
xdebug.remote_port=9000

; profiler settings
xdebug.profiler_append=1
xdebug.profiler_enable=1
xdebug.profiler_enable_trigger=1
xdebug.profiler_output_dir="c:/XXXXXX/"

now, important stuff
replace XXXX's in line
zend_extension_ts="c:/wamp/php/ext/php_xdebugXXXXXXX.dll"
with name of Windows module from step 1

Also instead of c:/XXXXXX/ write path where you want to keep profiling and debug files.


Step 3
Save your php.ini and restart your web server, start your local script and cachegrind files should appear in directory from step 2

Important notice, when you debug or profile large scripts (forums, blogs, etc) profiler writes a lots of data, so be careful to have enough free space, and check constantly

Step 4
When you are done,refer to step 2 and change line
xdebug.profiler_enable=1
into:
xdebug.profiler_enable=0 , and restart Apache again.
This will stop profiling process, and every time you wish to start profiling you must change it back to 1, and restart Apache.


Step 5
Download win cachegrind from http://sourceforge.net/projects/wincachegrind/
install, and set working directory to the same direcotry as in step 2, load your files and enjoy.

Now fun part begins, you should search for functions that takes most of your execution time, and try to optimize that code...

Few general advices for fast application are:
-As less includes as possible.
-Avoid too many database connections, try to use JOINS in your SQL query to get most meaningful data.
-Avoid array sort and count inside loops.
-when ever possible use caching of database data.

PHP function to get mondays from some date

This is nice little function that returns all Monday that passed from specified date.


<?php

/*
#  getWeeks function;
#  author: Dragan Bajcic
#  http://hosaka.blogspot.com
#  usage: getWeeks(2006,2) - returns an array of all Mondays since second week of 2006
# inspired by: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php#68269
*/

function getWeeks($year,$week_no){
   $week = 0;
   $day = 2;
   $mo = 1;
   $mondays = array();
   $today=time();
   $i =$week_no;

   $test =  strtotime(date("r", mktime(0, 0, 0, $mo,$day, $year)) . "+" . $i . " week");


   while ($today >= $test) {

       array_push($mondays,date("d-m-Y", $test));

         $i++;
       $test =  strtotime(date("r", mktime(0, 0, 0, $mo,$day, $year)) . "+" . $i . " week");


   }
   return $mondays;
}
/*
#######################################################
# Get all weeks and mondays starting from week #45,2006
#######################################################
*/
$mondays=getWeeks(2006,45);


print "weeks:<br/>";
foreach ($mondays as $ws){

   echo date("d M Y", strtotime($ws))." - ".date("d M Y",strtotime($ws)+(7*24*60*60))."<br/>";


}

print "mondays:<br/>";
foreach ($mondays as $ws){

   echo date("d M Y", strtotime($ws))."<br/>";


}

/*output:

weeks:
20 Nov 2006 - 27 Nov 2006
27 Nov 2006 - 04 Dec 2006
04 Dec 2006 - 11 Dec 2006
mondays:
20 Nov 2006
27 Nov 2006
04 Dec 2006

*/

?>



Cool icons for your website

If you need some cool icons for your project(web site, CMS, Blog or whatever), check this few that I came across in last few days:

• Twotone icons great, minimal icons.
• Tango icons, rich, great for GUI or CMS
• Silk icons, nice and clean icons
  

Cheers.

WebDev search

As soon I've read about Google coop, I've created this little search engine. Its mostly for my personal use, but feel to use it or contribute .
You can also try it right now, it's on the top of this page

SiT Tracking

Here is a sneak preview of my new PHP driven application:



This is early alpha phase of development, expect more pictures soon. ;]

MySQL vs PostgreSQL vs EnterpriseDB

in this test I used:
php 4.x
mysql 5.0.18
postgreSQL 8.0.3
EnterpriseDB 8.1.3.12
Results:

Using unixODBC + EnterpriseDB odbc drivers

+----------------+---------------+---------------+--------------+
|# of inserts    |MySQL          |EnterpriseDB   |PostgreSQL    |
+----------------+---------------+---------------+--------------+
|20.000          |6.32 sec       |35.4 sec       |27.2          |
|10.000          |3.11 sec       |16.6 sec       |14.0          |
|5.000           |1.51 sec       |08.7 sec       |06.1          |
|2.000           |0.62 sec       |03.5 sec       |02.2          |
|1.000           |0.34 sec       |01.5 sec       |01.1          |
+----------------+---------------+---------------+--------------+

As you can see, MySQL is aprox 5 timer faster than Pgsql, EnterpriseDB is tested
using unixODBC drivers, so that migh slow proces a little bit.

AJAX in 60 seconds with My-BIC and PHP

My-BIC os one of the simplest AJAX frameworks today.

After you download script all you need to do is to put mybic.js and mybic_server.php in some directory on your web server and you are ready to go.

Here is the simple example of getting time from the server with ajax.

First we create test.html file:

---

<html>
<head>
<title>AJAX TEST</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="mybic.js"></script>
<script>

    var ajaxObj = new XMLHTTP("mybic_server.php");
    
    function get_time(){
        ajaxObj.call('action=get_time', 'content');
      }

</script>

</head>
<body>

   <div onmouseover="get_time();"> Show me the time ! </div>
   <div id="content">  </div>
</body>
</html>

---

Now when we have frontend, we need to create php file to do background job. Since our function and action are named get_time we must create php file with same name.

So we create get_time.php:

---

<?

class get_time
{
var $queryVars;
function get_time($queryVars)
{

$this->qv = $queryVars;
}
/**
* Method to return the status of the AJAX transaction
*
* @return  string A string of raw HTML fetched from the Server
*/
function return_response()

{

       $a=date("H:i:s D-M-Y", time());
       return ($a);
}



function is_authorized()
{
return true;
}
}

?>

---

Now all you need to do is to go with your mouse cursor over "show me the time" text and My-BIC will return time vie innerHTML into content div.

More info on My-Bic homepage
http://www.litfuel.net/mybic/

JavaScript debugger / dumper

I've found nice little debugger/ object dumper for JavaScript
Link