This document covers changes to your code to improve php performance.
Note: please reference this article for more technical details and real-life examples
PHP7 introduced significant improvements in performance and memory usage. One of improvements was an optimization of internals for associative arrays. To be more specific if an array has only integer keys organized in natural ascending order, then it will consume less memory and work a little bit faster with core array functions.
Php Inspections (EA Extended) checks array creation constructs and gives hints if found ways for enabling the optimizations.
Synopsis: merging arrays in a loop is slow and causes high CPU usage.
Let's start with an example demonstrating the case:
$options = [];
foreach ($configurationSources as $source) {
/* something happens here */
$options = array_merge($options, $source->getOptions());
}In order to reduce execution time we can modify the code and perform the merge operation only once:
$options = [];
foreach ($configurationSources as $source) {
/* something happens here */
$options[] = $source->getOptions(); // <- yes, we'll use a little bit more memory
}
/* PHP below 5.6 */
$options = call_user_func_array('array_merge', $options + [[]]); // the nested empty array covers cases when no loops were made, must be second operand
/* PHP 5.6+: more friendly to refactoring as less magic involved */
$options = array_merge([], ...$options); // the empty array covers cases when no loops were made
/* PHP 7.4+: array_merge now accepts to be called without arguments. It will work even if $options is empty */
$options = array_merge(...$options);The second case demonstration:
for ($index = 0; $index < count($array); ++$index) {
/* something happens here */
}Here count($array) is executed in each loop cycle and cause performance issues when counting big arrays.
Instead, we can introduce a local variable, so the count operation gets executed only once:
for ($index = 0, $count = count($array); $index < $count; ++$index) {
/* something happens here */
}Note: this inspection has settings.
The inspection analyzes foreach statements for using variables by reference. It promotes using values by reference if corresponding settings were applied and checks for possible side-effects. Main side-effect is that foreach variables are remaining after loop finishes.
When such variable is a reference, we can accidentally modify the original collection, like here:
$array = ['...'];
foreach ($array as &$value) {
/* something happens here */
}
/* something happens here as well */
$value = null; /* $array now is [null] */It'll be enough to place unset($value) after the foreach-loops to prevent the issue.
The inspection analyzes assignment statements and checks if the both left and right sides have repetitive functions and methods calls, which can be reduced by introducing a local variable.
/* Case 1: repetitive function calls */
$array[trim($value)] = trim($value);
/* instead we can use following approach */
$normalizedValue = trim($value);
$array[$normalizedValue] = $normalizedValue;
/* Case 2: repetitive method calls */
$array[$normalizer->normalize($value)] = $normalizer->normalize($value);
/* instead we can use following approach */
$normalizedValue = $normalizer->normalize($value);
$array[$normalizedValue] = $normalizedValue;Note: the inspection is further developed in Php Inspections (EA Ultimate)
The inspection applies multiple checks to regular expressions in preg_* functions:
- possible plain string functions usage (the functions are always faster)
- missing and ambiguous modifiers
- promotes usage of pre-defined character sets (\d, \w and etc.)
- identifies some cases of catastrophic backtracking (hence pre-defined character sets usage is recommended)
It's also important to understand that often catastrophic backtracking vulnerable regexes are leading to CVEs.