Question

I do a simple loop over all products (within a cron) to generate a block and cache the results,

but the toHhtml method lets memory_get_usage() grow to about 0.1M per product

I can reduce the effect for load of getModel but toHTML kills it

foreach($products as $productid) {

// leaks but clear instance helps
$model = Mage::getModel("catalog/product")->load($productid);

$block1 = Mage::app()->getLayout()->createBlock("catalog/product_list_upsell");
$block1 = $block1->setTemplate("catalog/product/list/upsell.phtml");

// kills it
cacheContent($block1->toHTml());

// this helps 
$model->clearInstance();

}

any idea, except processing each loop item in a separate php call ?

Answer 1

You don’t need to create a new block instance every time. The data gets prepared on every call to toHtml(), just create $block1 once and reuse it.

This should remove a lot of references to model instances that won’t be needed anymore.

Edit: That being said, did you leave out the code where you register the product instance for blocks? It should be:

$block1 = Mage::app()->getLayout()->createBlock("catalog/product_list_upsell");
$block1 = $block1->setTemplate("catalog/product/list/upsell.phtml");

foreach($products as $productid) {

    $model = Mage::getModel("catalog/product")->load($productid);

    Mage::unregister('product');
    Mage::register('product', $model);

    cacheContent($block1->toHTml());

    $model->clearInstance();

}