Website Render Time with PHP >= 5.1
Tuesday, March 2. 2010
In CakePHP v1.3.x, there will no longer be an automatic dump of tons of information (probably because the DebugKit plugin can handle all of that information for us) when in debug mode. However, in my non-CakePHP websites, and even in my Cake websites, I have become accustomed to viewing the source to see a full render time for the page in an HTML comment. Thanks to the help of "jnay" over at CakeQs.org, I've found out about a new (as of PHP 5.1) $_SERVER variable argument called "REQUEST_TIME". It holds the UNIX timestamp of the initiation of the call.
By using this variable, along with the optional boolean argument for microtime (as of PHP 5.0.0), we can determine the HTML render time of our application with the following calculation in either our footer view/template, or controller (preferably in the last possible iteration of your project's render):
The echo is optional and used only as an example here; it simply depends on how you use the calculation in your script(s)/framework(s). This is much easier than starting the timer in the header and calculating the difference in the footer like I had to do in the PHP 4 days!
Remember, this is only for trivial estimations and comparisons. If you need to thoroughly evaluate your script(s) for time efficiency you should be using something else, such as Xdebug and a form of CacheGrind for your choice of OS.
By using this variable, along with the optional boolean argument for microtime (as of PHP 5.0.0), we can determine the HTML render time of our application with the following calculation in either our footer view/template, or controller (preferably in the last possible iteration of your project's render):
The echo is optional and used only as an example here; it simply depends on how you use the calculation in your script(s)/framework(s). This is much easier than starting the timer in the header and calculating the difference in the footer like I had to do in the PHP 4 days!
Remember, this is only for trivial estimations and comparisons. If you need to thoroughly evaluate your script(s) for time efficiency you should be using something else, such as Xdebug and a form of CacheGrind for your choice of OS.
