Using V8 Javascript engine as a PHP extension (update: write PHP session)

"We Are Borg PHP. We Will Assimilate You. Resistance Is Futile!"

Just got to something described as: This extension embeds the V8 Javascript Engine into PHP.
It is called v8js and the documentation is already available on php.net, examples and the sources are here. V8 is known to work well in browsers and webservers like node.js, but does it work inside PHP? YES!

MySQL or MySQLi or PDO

Lessons learned:

• MySQLi is 3-4 times slower than MySQL when fetching less then 500 datasets
• MySQLi is 2-4 times faster than MySQL when fetching more than 500 datasets
• PDO is 2-5 times slower than MySQL/MySQLi
• Unbuffered queries are 15-40 percent faster than buffered queries in MySQLi
• Unbuffered queries are 10-25 percent faster than buffered queries in MySQL for less than 10000 datasets
• Unbuffered queries are 3-7 percent slower than buffered queries in MySQL for more than 10000 datasets
• Unbuffered queries are 0-5 percent faster than buffered queries in PDO
• Non thread safe versions of PHP on win32 are 50 percent faster than thread safe versions

ircmaxell: Is Autoloading A Good Solution?

ircmaxell: Is Autoloading A Good Solution?: at a 75% class usage tradeoff point, it doesn't really make sense not to autoload, especially given all of the other benefits. So in the end, it looks like autoloading is indeed a good solution...
From the comments: Simply enabling APC sped up the fixed requires by 82%, and the autoloading by an amazing 91%.

Decorator or Subclassing?

Using anonymous functions in PHP is very nice to implement a decorator, but what about performance? Results:

• Subclassing is 40 percent faster than using a decorator
• Subclassing might require a bit more code

How to write a really small and fast controller with PHP (update: benchmark Slim, Silex, Zend Framework, Symfony2)

To handle a lot of traffic, we need a fast controller with very little memory overhead. First, we implement a dynamic controller.

The design is based on the micro frameworks Slim and Silex. The first example maps the URL "http://server/index.php/blog/2012/03/02" to a function with the parameters $year, $month and $day:

// index.php, handle /blog/2012/03/02
$app = new App();
$app->get('/blog/:year/:month/:day', function($year, $month, $day) {
  printf('%d-%02d-%02d', $year, $month, $day);
});

How to implement i18n without performance overhead

i18n is always difficult to implement and costs a lot performance. Normally, implementations use gettext() or a custom t()-function to translate a string. t() searches a INI or XML file for a translation key and returns the value. For example t('setting', 'de'), gives the German translation 'Einstellung'.

Typical optimizations use associative arrays (hashmaps) loaded into APC or Memcached. This requires a lot of memory for the array and produces a lot of cpu cycles for calling t() all the time. So the question is, can we do this better?

Yes! We use a just-in-time compiler for our PHP files and write the compiled PHP files to disk, so APC can cache them like regular PHP files.

Array key lookup: isset() or array_key_exists() or @ ?

Lessons learned:

• isset() is faster than array_key_exists()
• array_key_exists() is faster than @
• @ is slower than ignoring notices with error_reporting()

PHP Deployment with Dropbox

Deploying files over sFTP or scp is boring and takes a lot of time. Using git with commit-hooks to initiate the deployment process is comfortable, but there is a solution that's even faster:

Deploy your server(s) with a Dropbox!

Here we go, first create a new Dropbox account:

Development Principles - Think first programming

A professor once told me:
Remember, a string goes into the server, a string goes out. Not more, not less.

So let's ask the following questions:

• do you need a seven tier architecture?
• do you need to write a servlet container in PHP?
• do you need to derive a class more than twice?
• where do you need OOP?
• do you need design patterns?
• how to choose the right technology?