Question

What is the best option? (Performance on frequent requests permlink)

• Multiple access on data files (Several access to filesystem is a problem?):

readfile("meta-data.html");
readfile("header.html");
readfile("ads.html");
readfile("body-tags.html"); 
readfile("ads2.html");
readfile("profile-target-userA.html"); 
...

• Preprocess parts of the page with template and str_replace:

$file = file_get_contents("template.code"); 
$file = str_replace("<!-- meta-data -->", $new_meta_data, $file);
$file = str_replace("<!-- header-->", $new_header, $file);
... 
echo $file;

Other alternative methods are welcome.

Answer 1

Assuming that your OS has an I/O cache, the second approach may very well wind up being slower. Moving strings around in memory (which is what str_replace is going to do) can be considerably more expensive than hitting the disk, especially when the files are currently cached by the OS.

However, you should be basing your template/view system on maintainability and flexibility, not just performance. It’s better to sacrifice a bit in terms of performance to produce more maintainable templates.

Usually, I see templates written as PHP files — one would set a few variables and then include() the templates. PHP will then execute them, which gives you quite a bit of flexibility in coding your views. And, if a template file really is just HTML, include() will have the same effect as readfile().