Classes

[thmnetwork]

I'm halfway tempted to start using classes, but I was just wondering, I know they can save a lot of time when scripting, but do they slow process time down at all? If so, by how much?

[_SuperString]

ive seen no real evidence to suggest classes are slower, even in high volume usage. But it really down to how you code. If your code is though through and writen correctly then I see no reason to not use classes. I try and use classes as much as possible now as it helps keep your application layer seperate and is in my view good coding standards. PHP have put quite a bit a work into developing object support, so why not use it ?

Why not try writing you code both ways and timing your script execution time, that way you can see the performance differences.

[thmnetwork]

thanks I think I'll do it just for the practice.

But speaking about performance time, I tried using it on my website but the process time looked like it was a little off. A page would seem to come up rather quickly and it said it was nearly a second, but then it seemed to hang in the middle of the page before going on, and it ays half a second etc. I was using the example they give you in the PHP manual, so I don't know, could that be a server issue, or just my imagination?

[_SuperString]

You could test the execution time for each part of your script to see what part take the longest. For example the time to create a object, retreive results from a class, echo out the results, etc.
here is the execution script I use: (found it somewhere)

function e_start ($name = 'default') {
        global $ss_timing_start_times;
        $ss_timing_start_times[$name] = explode(' ', microtime());
}

function e_stop ($name = 'default') {
        global $ss_timing_stop_times;
        $ss_timing_stop_times[$name] = explode(' ', microtime());
}

function e_current ($name = 'default') {
        global $ss_timing_start_times, $ss_timing_stop_times;
        if (!isset($ss_timing_start_times[$name])) {
                return 0;
        }
        if (!isset($ss_timing_stop_times[$name])) {
                $stop_time = explode(' ', microtime());
        }
        else {
                $stop_time = $ss_timing_stop_times[$name];
        }
        // do the big numbers first so the small ones aren't lost
        $current = $stop_time[1] - $ss_timing_start_times[$name][1];
        $current += $stop_time[0] - $ss_timing_start_times[$name][0];
        return $current;
}

use it like this:

e_start("object");
  .. your object script
e_stop("object");

e_start("retreive");
  .. your script
e_stop("retreive");

e_start("echo");
  .. echo out
e_stop("echo");

// output the results
echo "Object = ".e_current("object")."<br>;
echo "Retreive = ".e_current("retreive")."<br>;
echo "Echo = ".e_current("echo");