Question

I’m building a web app, the way I started off the app for testing purposes is to load lots of data in to session arrays from my database so I can use the values easily throughout the pages. I have one page the has numerous selects on it, and each time the php page loops through all the variables, chooses the selected one, and outputs the dropdown. One of my arrays though has just under 3000 values and loading this dropdown slows the page down from about 300ms to 1-1.2s. Not terrible but easy to tell that it is less responsive. So I’d like to know if there is anyway for me to improve the load speed, or any thoughts on a substitute for the dropdown.

What I have tried so far:

1. Session arrays hold all the values, when the page is loaded through jquery ajax method the php page loops through these values and echos the dropdowns.

2. Php include – create php or html pages of all the values pre written as selects, this creates a ~100kb page for the problem dropdown and this is then included with include. Takes roughly the same amount plus I’d have to then use javascript to set the value, but I’d do this if it could be improved. I thought perhaps some caching could provide improvements here. There seemed to be no significant difference between html and php pages for include but I’d assume html would be better. I’m also assuming that I cannot use regular caching because I am using a php function to include these pages.

3. I have tried just loading in the html page and it takes about 1 sec on first load, after browser caching it is back down to 100-350ms so I imagine caching could provide a huge boost in performance.

I have considered:

1. Creating a cached version of the whole page but this will be quite the pain to implement so I’d only do it if people thought it is the right way to go with this. I would have to use ajax to retrieve some data for the inputs which I was originally doing with php echos.

2. Just removing the problem dropdown.

Just to clarify something I’ve never had clarified, am I correct in thinking php pages can never be cached by the browser, and so by extension any php included files can’t be either. But then how come a javascript file linked to in a php file can be cached, because it is using an html method?

Answer 1

The data being returned and parsed into a dropdown is probably your bottleneck. However, if the bottleneck is actually the PHP code you could try installing an optcode cache like APC at http://php.net/manual/en/book.apc.php. It will speed up your PHP. (Zend Optimizer is also available at: http://www.zend.com/en/products/guard/runtime-decoders)

If your bottleneck is the database where the items in the dropdown is coming from, you may want to try setting MySQL to cache the results.

You may also want to try an alternative dropdown that uses AJAX to populate the dropdown as the user scrolls down, a few records at a time. You could also create it as a text field that prompts the user for possible matches as they type. These things may be faster.