Executive PHP scripts faster.

[harry]

Guys, I found some of my scripts takes much more time to get execute, how can i increase this execution time for such PHP scripts.
Is there any special utility or code which i can use for faster execution

[kev woodman]

Check it is the PHP first Harry. Although scripts do take different times to execute we're normally talking milliseconds here so unless you are testing under extremely heavy load you shouldn't notice a difference. If some pages are taking longer than others then odds on it is the HTML etc that is taking the time not the PHP.

If you're sure it is the script then does the script access a database. If it does the problem could lie in the DB rather than the PHP engine. Are you making complex pulls from multiple tables? Are you asking the DB to do some processing before passing the results to your script?

If it's not the DB then there are a few things you can do to improve the performance of the PHP:

* use Zend optimizer;

* cache the output of your scripts;

* have a good look at your code and see if you can cut down on some statements or use tweaks like most likely option first.

As I say though it's almost certainly not PHP that's causing the problem. The project I'm working on at the moment has a section with a gateway page that heavily uses Ajax to carry out CRUD operations on 12 separate DB tables. The controller (PHP) for this page is a big lump of code and at the moment we haven't got any performance issues at all other than the time taken to load the graphics and javascript.

[harry]

kev, could it be due to a directory of graphics(images) which i m using in my site?

[kev woodman]

If you're loading a lot of graphics onto the page yes. What size (in Kb) are the page graphics?

[harry]

much varied, some are too heavy and some quite small in size.

Kev, you told : cache the output of your scripts;--- Is it the opcode caching you are talking about.

[kev woodman]

It could be ( have a look at APC or Zend Cache ) or you could use PHPs built-in script caching. Have a look at this article for an introduction.

If you're using a template engine or a framework you may find that there are already caching scripts built-in e.g. Smarty and Cake both have built-in caching.

Another thing I've just thought of - are these scripts 'live' on a remote server or are you testing them on a local machine? If it's on your local machine then I wouldn't be concerned about performance just yet - test them live first.