speed increase "ALL php" or "mostly

Anon

Theoretical Question: Which is faster on a big html/php page:

1.) ALL php, from beginning to end
2.) Escaping out of PHP and into html whenever possible

My visitors see a huge page with many tables and tons of data.

If I escaped php as much as possible, my page would look like this, if I quantified the amounts of code in percentages

5% PHP
5% HTML
15% PHP
3% HTML
3% PHP
3% HTML
3% PHP
25% PHP
10% HTML
10% PHP
10% HTML
5% PHP
3% HTML

Well, that's about what it would be if I escaped PHP as much as possible. My whole page is 20K of code, accessing mysql database, etc.

mrmufin

A big, vague question, indeed... "Speed" is a composite of many, many factors...

How many times does the webserver need to hit the disk to retrieve files? The more "include" files, the more disk hits, the more performance may suffer.

Are the database connections persistent? The more connection overhead your database access involves, the more performance may suffer.

Are the database queries efficient? Poorly written queries can impede the whole process. Is the database engine shared with many (or any) other users?

How much control over the server do you have?
If things are slow, can you throw more memory or a faster drive into the machine, or recompile the PHP interepreter, or is the server remotely located, precluding you from doing this...?

Is PHP installed as a DSO or a stand-alone binary interpreter?

Beyond speed, maintenance must be considered, too. What will provide the easiest, cleanest method of site maintenance...

I'd bet your question has as many answers as there are server configuration options and coding styles. Try thangs a few ways. Run some benchmarks. Keep the code clean. Keep the database properly indexed and organized. Then hope for the best...

jc94062

I think escaping all the time probably slows it down as the page has to parse in and out of PHP all the time.

Personally, while my older pages are still written like yours above, I try to write using <<<EOD , EOD; now and then echo it...

ie:

$form = <<<EOD
<form action=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] ...
//other stuff

EOD;
//note that EOD; has to be on a line by
//itself as far left as possible to work

$form .= <<<EOD
//add some more stuff in
EOD;

echo $form;

It doesn't even have to be EOD, it can be <<<G or anything I believe, I just learnt it at work and continue to use that standard for my own sites as well now.

You can put pretty much anything inside the <<<EOD -> EOD; system, HTML as normal and php variables without having to echo them out.
Lots of my pages still use the system I now hate

<option value=<?echo$var?>>Name here</option> for example, its just an excess of code.

For stuff that involves calculations in something just EOD; out and then use something like this

for ($i=0;$i<count($arr);$i++)
{
$form .= "$name[$i]";
}

anyways, you get the idea 😃

webmasterp

Lets be realistic. It's not going to make a noticeable difference unless you're processing HUGE loads.

No matter how you mix it up, it's still (theoretically) O(1) because it's a constant number of escapes. This isn't even near O(n) so there really insn't anything to worry about.