Question

I’ve hacked together some php code that can probably be improved in terms of it’s efficiency and loading speed. How can I improve it? Baring in mind by no means am I great at coding!!

At present the page takes about 5-10 seconds to load.

It’s looping through hundreds of wordpress posts, placing them in a new mysql table and geocoding a lat/long. It’s also checking if the post is already in the database.

Here’s the code below:

<?php
require("database.php");
// Opens a connection to a MySQL server
$con = mysql_connect("localhost", $username, $password);

if (!$con)
{
    die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
}

mysql_select_db("medicom_wp", $con);

$pages = get_posts(array(
    'orderby' => 'title', 
    'post_type' => 'members',
    'numberposts' => 300,
    'post_status' => 'any'  
    ));
foreach($pages as $post) {
    setup_postdata($post);

    $company = get_field('company_name');
    $address = get_field('address');
    $city = get_field('city');
    $post_code = get_field('post_code');

    $sql = sprintf("select count('x') as cnt from markers where `name` = '%s'", mysql_real_escape_string($company));
    $row_dup = mysql_fetch_assoc(mysql_query($sql,$con));
    if ($row_dup['cnt'] == 0) {
        mysql_query("INSERT INTO markers (`name`, `address`, `lat`, `lng`, `type`) VALUES ('".$company."', '".$address.", ".$city.", ".$post_code."', '0.0', '0.0', '')");
    }
}
wp_reset_query();


define("MAPS_HOST", "maps.google.com");
define("KEY", "");

// Opens a connection to a MySQL server
$connection = mysql_connect("localhost", $username, $password);
if (!$connection) {
  die("Not connected : " . mysql_error());
}

// Set the active MySQL database
$db_selected = mysql_select_db($database, $connection);
if (!$db_selected) {
  die("Can\'t use db : " . mysql_error());
}

// Select all the rows in the markers table
$query = "SELECT * FROM markers WHERE 1";
$result = mysql_query($query);
if (!$result) {
  die("Invalid query: " . mysql_error());
}

// Initialize delay in geocode speed
$delay = 0;
$base_url = "http://" . MAPS_HOST . "/maps/geo?output=xml" . "&key=" . KEY;

// Iterate through the rows, geocoding each address
while ($row = @mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
  $geocode_pending = true;

  while ($geocode_pending) {
    $address = $row["address"];
    $id = $row["id"];
    $request_url = $base_url . "&q=" . urlencode($address);
    $xml = simplexml_load_file($request_url) or die("url not loading");

    $status = $xml->Response->Status->code;
    if (strcmp($status, "200") == 0) {
      // Successful geocode
      $geocode_pending = false;
      $coordinates = $xml->Response->Placemark->Point->coordinates;
      $coordinatesSplit = split(",", $coordinates);
      // Format: Longitude, Latitude, Altitude
      $lat = $coordinatesSplit[1];
      $lng = $coordinatesSplit[0];

      $query = sprintf("UPDATE markers " .
             " SET lat = '%s', lng = '%s' " .
             " WHERE id = '%s' LIMIT 1;",
             mysql_real_escape_string($lat),
             mysql_real_escape_string($lng),
             mysql_real_escape_string($id));
      $update_result = mysql_query($query);
      if (!$update_result) {
        die("Invalid query: " . mysql_error());
      }
    } else if (strcmp($status, "620") == 0) {
      // sent geocodes too fast
      $delay += 1000;
    } else {
      // failure to geocode
      $geocode_pending = false;
      echo "Address " . $address . " failed to geocoded. ";
      echo "Received status " . $status . "
\n";
    }
    usleep($delay);
  }
}
?> 

Answer 1

You need to restructure your code to make use of the multi-insert SQL query. This should speed up performance considerably.

Instead of doing things like this, hundreds of times:

INSERT INTO table ( col1, col2) VALUES ( val1, val2)
INSERT INTO table ( col1, col2) VALUES ( val3, val4)
... 

You do this, once:

INSERT INTO table ( col1, col2) VALUES ( val1, val2), ( val3, val4)

Now, lets apply it to your code:

$values = array();

foreach($pages as $post) {
    setup_postdata($post);

    $company = get_field('company_name');
    $address = get_field('address');
    $city = get_field('city');
    $post_code = get_field('post_code');

    $values[] = "( '$company', '$address', '$city', '$post_code', 0.0, 0.0, '')";
}

$query = 'INSERT IGNORE INTO markers (`name`, `address`, `lat`, `lng`, `type`) 
              VALUES ' . implode( ', ', $values);

Now, instead of checking if the SQL row exists (with that $row_dup query), make sure you have a primary key on the name column, and do either INSERT IGNORE or INSERT ... ON DUPLIACATE KEY UPDATE.

You can learn more about these queries from this SO question.