Cache Dictionary in OPCache

[alexander-schranz]

We lately did some optimization on Sulu Metadata which could maybe be interesting for this library specially read the builded .bin files.

We got some reports where somebody was on a slow Cloud System (think it was Azure App Server) where file access really is slow as hell. To improve on such Systems the performance we now generating .php file via Symfony Var Exporter, which makes the file being part of the OpCache which is kept in memory.

The simplified version of it looks like this:

$formMetadata = @include $path;
if ($formMetadata instanceof FormMetadata) {
    return $formMetadata;
}

file_put_content($path, '<?php return ' . VarExporter::export($this->generateFormMetadata()) . ';');

$formMetadata = @include $path;

return $formMetadata;

It is used @include as also doing file_exists before would be bad for the performance in such system.

Sure the question is if a additional dependency like symfony/var-exporter is good here. But wanted to share our optimization with you. Maybe you can also implement your own similar mechanic for this library or anything else in Loupe. If the file is / can be changed a \opcache_invalidate($path, true) can be used.

[Toflar]

This would mean you store megabytes of data into opcache, not sure this is a good idea?
No need for any dependency for sure because all that's needed is just 2 simple strings that contain the binary data.

[alexander-schranz]

If it's really megabytes it may not be a good idea :). But yeah no need for extra dependency var_export would probably be enough for this usecase.

[Toflar]

Of course it's megabytes, that's the whole point this library exists 😉 Because using a regular PHP array would use tens/hundreds of megabytes while this library does not 😉