Much slower when using Objects ? ...

[Anon]

Hi!

I'm currently programming some kind of tree-structure to place objects in (think file system). The functions I used for traveling and displaying the tree were all written QuicknDirty, so just mysql queries and result variables.

now in an attempt to make everything cleaner and more clear I switched them to use objects derived from classes for each object.

imagine:
version 1:
$obj = mysql_query("GET ME THE OBJECT");
print $obj["name"]; ... etc

version 2:
$obj = new treeobject($id);
print $obj->name; ... etc

now to my disappointment the object oriented approach is much much much slower that the plain straigth forward approach. But I really would like to use objects.

Is there anything special to take into account when using objects, or is php4 just very slow when creating many objects ? I even tried just using one object and updating that with each pass of the while loop.

any suggestions are greatly appreciated !

mats99
have more fun!

[[deleted]]

How much slower is "much much much"?

Objects are bound to be a little slower because of the more complex structures,
but it shouldn't make a noticable difference.

Unless you have some kind of recursive structure that creates tons of objects...

[Anon]

hi!

Havn't benchmarked it, but at least 4 times slower.

its not recursive, its just a while loop which steps through all results of a mysql query which returns ID's, which are used to create an object with "new treeobject(ID)", which uses its constructor to get all information needed from the db. then some properties of this object are printed.

like:
while($currentid = mysql_fetch_array)
{
$obj = new treeobject($currentid);
$obj->prepare;
print $obj->property1;
print $obj->property2;
}

this is as I said done for all result rows, and without objects it takes about 4 secs to read and draw everything, with objects it takes about 15-20 sec.

I found an advice on the zend page that objects slow down php, I just want to know if my experience is "normal" or not.

mats99
have more fun!

[[deleted]]

I think you'd get much better performance if you take the
$obj = new
line out of the loop.

You are overwriting the $obj everytime anyway, so calling the new() function is not needed.

Instead, make an initilizer function to call instead of the constructor to initialize the object.

So it'll end up like this:

$obj = new treeobject();
while($currentid = mysql_fetch_array)
{
$obj->init($currentid);
$obj->prepare();
print $obj->property1;
print $obj->property2;
}