The document provides performance tips for Symfony2 and PHP applications. It recommends starting by measuring performance before and after optimizations to identify where to focus efforts. Key areas to optimize include services like using PHP opcache, architecture like caching, and code through techniques like moving calculations out of loops. Symfony-specific tips involve using bytecode caching, lazy-loading services, and caching in general. The overall message is to prioritize scalability and only optimize after identifying bottlenecks through measurement and profiling.

1. PERFORMANCE TIPS
FOR SYMFONY2 & PHP
Minsk PHP User Group Meetup #10

2. Intro
 Max Romanovsky
 37 Slides
 Questions after presentation
 Out of scope: HW & OS tuning, VM vs HW
servers
 “Premature optimization is the root of all evil”
Knuth’s quote is missing
 No cats, boobs or other images in slides 
2

3. Quiz
3
 What to optimize?
 Architecture
 Code
 Services

4. Agenda
 Overview
 Measure
 Services
 Architecture
 Code
 Symfony2 tips
4

5. 5 Overview

6. How to start?
 Forget about microoptimizations for now
 Курочка по зернышку – весь двор в говне
 Make it scalable
 What is cheaper? To scale or to optimize?
6

7. Tune
 Tune services
 Tune architecture
 Consider tuning code
7

8. Quiz
8
 What was the sloooooowest?
 DB queries
 Network communication
 PHP configuration
 VM/HW server
 Stupid code

9. What could be slow
9
 Network communication (with client, inside
LAN)
 VM/HW server
 OS & runtime itself
 Communication with services
 Code (finally!)

10. 10 Measure

11. Stop! Measure
11
 Measure before
 Measure during
 Measure after
 Measure periodically
 measure
 Measure
 MEASURE!!1

12. Quiz
12
 What do you use?
 Symfony Profiler
 symfony/stopwatch
 Из говна и палок
 Xhprof
 Xdebug
 Zend Profiler

13. Tools
13
 Xhprof / uprofiler
 Xdebug 
 Framework tools 
  = overhead & irrelevant results

14. Question
14
 Can we compare xhprof & xdebug results?
 Are they relevant?

15. Overhead & irrelevant results?
15
 Runtime (i.e. code execution) is slower with
profiler enabled
 Communication with services is not slower
 Mess in results
 You are analyzing DIFFERENT results

16. Use lightweight profiler
16
 XHProf
 XHgui (saves runs to RDBMS)
 Uprofiler (fork?)
 https://github.com/FriendsOfPHP/uprofiler

17. Measure performance in real
world
17
 Turn on profiler periodically
 For 1% of requests
 For 1 app server
 Record & replay user activity
 Use Jmeter to record scenarios
 Use good old ab, siege, http_load

18. Tune
18
 Tune 1 factor at once
 Store configuration & measuring results in
VCS
 Measure after tuning

19. 19 Services

20. Why?
20
 Receive profit without changing a single line of
code

21. Question
21
 Do you know what is an Opcache?
 Do you use it?

22. PHP
22
 Don’t use the latest PHP version, please!
 Use PHP-FPM (or even HHVM?)
 Opcache or APC
 APCu
 Compile stable libraries as PHP extensions
 Twig
 Redis
 AMQP

23. Composer
23
 composer install --optimize-autoloader

24. 24 Architecture

25. Architecture
 Make it scalable. Period.
 Use PAAS services
 CDN
 File storage
 Choose efficient protocols & frameworks
 Apache Thrift
 Google Protocol Buffers
25

26. Cache
26
 Raw data
 Computed data
 View layer

27. Cache
27
 Raw data = DB/Data Source
 MySQL query cache
 HTTP API reverse proxy cache

28. Cache
28
 Computed data = Key-value
 Persistent?
 Consistent?
 Check your DB features

29. Cache
29
 View layer = HTTP cache
 Nginx
 Varnish

30. 30 Code

31. Why not to optimize
31
 Improve architecture
 Man, it’s PHP! It is designed to be SLOOOOW
 Optimize code for people, not for machines
 Курочка по зернышку?..
 Well… OK. But profile

32. What to optimize. Boooring
32
 DB
 Move calculations to DB
 Move aggregation to DB
 MOVE LIMIT TO DB!!1
 Move calculations outside the loop
 Don’t concatenate string insanely
 Don’t pass huge arrays by value to functions
 Don’t use arrays anyway 

33. 33 Symfony2 tips

34. As seen on TV
34
 http://symfony.com/doc/current/book/performa
nce.html
 Use a Byte Code Cache
 Composer's Class Map
 Caching the Autoloader with APC
 Use Bootstrap Files

35. Tipzzz
35
 Services
 Lazy with ocramius/proxy-manager
 Controllers
 Console commands
 Move app/cache to tmpfs
 Twig C extension
 Don’t use router:dump. It’s deprecated
 https://github.com/symfony/symfony/issues/9652
 Don’t use Symfony Profiler for profiling 

36. More?
36
 http://symfony.com/blog/push-it-to-the-limits-symfony2-
for-high-performance-needs
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8ewqVGu
77w
 https://profiler.sensiolabs.com/ - still waiting for
invite

37. The End
37
 max.romanovsky@gmail.com
 http://maxromanovsky.com