Smarty

[vbAlex]

I'd like to be able to have the thing on the bottom of my pages which says how long it took to generate the page -- that would be cool. Although I have found no relativly easy way to do it without integrating inline PHP into the template (which I don't really want to do.)

My request is this: Can somebody make a way to output this timing?

[sucresemoule]

I include this file at the begining of my main php.
timestart.inc.php :

[vbAlex]

What I meant was for it to actually be a Smarty variable, so I could put it anywhere on the page I wanted -- instead of having to put it in after I stop the timer.

[messju]

this can not work. how should smarty know the time it takes to generate the page, while it is still busy generating it?

[andre]

I'm using the following trick. Somewhere in your template put a special string. For example:

[vbAlex]

andre: Nice code/idea

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it shouldn't be too hard for Smarty to implement this internally given andre's code. I could see it being a 5 minute project for someone farmiliar with Smarty's source code (*hint* *hint* *hint*.)

Sorry if this is kinda thick, I'm kinda wrapped up in listing to music right now (Michelle Branch: Are You Happy Now? at the moment.)

[boots]

I like andre's suggestion, particularly if used with an output filter (vbAlex: there is no need to modify Smarty when you can customize it with the API ).

Here I suggest a slightly longer approach which isn't necessarily even as accurate. Never-the-less, it may be keen to use when tracing between templates and php code. Sort of like this idea but not limited to templates. This example also demonstrates using a static class method as a modifier which is a new feature in the current development version of Smarty. Assuming you do little or nothing after display() and that you do minimal work before starting the timer, this technique should be close to actual processing time--close enough that it is splitting hairs, IMHO. In addition, you gain some flexibility.

First: I have a util class which always gets loaded statically for dev sessions. Here, I will only show the necessary example timer code in that class, but I typically have other handy variable formatting functions in there. The method util::timer() takes two parameters, the first being an action and the second being an optional message. The allowed actions are 'begin', 'end', 'stop' and 'list'.

util.class.php
[php:1:a0785107e1]class util {
function timer($mode='begin', $msg='')
{
global $_timer_blocks, $_timer_history;
switch ($mode) {
case 'begin':
$_timer_blocks[] =array(microtime(), $msg);
break;

case 'end':
$last = array_pop($_timer_blocks);
$_start = $last[0];
$_msg = $last[1];
list($a_micro, $a_int) = explode(' ', $_start);
list($b_micro, $b_int) = explode(' ', microtime());
$elapsed = ($b_int - $a_int) + ($b_micro - $a_micro);
$_timer_history[] = array($elapsed, $_msg, "$_msg [".round($elapsed, 4)."s ".(round(1/$elapsed, 2))."/s]");
if ($msg) {
return "$_msg: {$elapsed}s \n";
}
return $elapsed;
break;

case 'list':
$o = '';
foreach ($_timer_history as $mark) {
$o .= $mark[2] . " \n";
}
return $o;
break;

case 'stop':
$result = '';
while(!empty($_timer_blocks)) {
$result .= util::timer('end', $msg);
}
return $result;
break;
}
}
}[/php:1:a0785107e1]

I create a custom Smarty subclass, SmartyExample.class.php:
[php:1:a0785107e1]include_once 'util.class.php';
class SmartyExample extends Smarty {
function SmartyExample()
{
// the following registers the static class method util::timer() as the "timer" modifier
$class = 'util';
$this->register_modifier('timer', array($class, 'timer'));
// setup smarty as fits your needs...
$this->Smarty();
}
}[/php:1:a0785107e1]

Now in my index.php
[php:1:a0785107e1]include_once 'util.class.php';
util::timer('begin', 'Page'); // starts a timer block with the message 'Page'

include_once 'SmartyExample.class.php';
$smarty = new SmartyExample();
// ... your app work goes here
$smarty->display('example.tpl'); // this template discharges the timer

echo 'history: '.util::timer('list'); // returns a history of timed block results
[/php:1:a0785107e1]

Still with me? We finally see the template:

example.tpl

[andre]

Wow
That's quite nice, boots. But why are you using a modifier to handle the timer? Whouldn't a plugin function make more sense here?
Something like {timer mode="begin" message="template block"}

[boots]

Hi Andre. Thanks for your comment and a very good question.

I used a modifier for a few reasons, but mainly because they can be used inline and combined. Also, I meant this as an example and it is not often you see folks implementing custom functionality with modifiers, so I thought I would show that

I mention it, but don't show that the timer actually returns a decimal value instead of text if you don't pass any message to 'end' or 'stop'. That means that {'end'|timer} returns a number which you might like to use in a calculation or conditional.

So using the modifier approach I can do this:

[ZeroFill]

first off, thanks for the tips

boots, for your suggestion, what does "/s" mean in

history: template block [0.0022s 454.55/s] level3 [0.0022s 454.55/s] level2 [0.0044s 227.27/s] Page [0.0110s 90.91/s]
_________________
my delimiters are <{ and }>

[boots]

ZeroFill--in [0.0022s 454.55/s ...] I show first the elapsed time in seconds (known as the period) and then I show the #/s -- ie. how many times that period can occur sequentially in a single second (known as the frequency). Doesn't mean *too* much but I am used to looking at things in terms of frequency.

[ZeroFill]

Fix in next post

[ZeroFill]

i decided to duplicate your demo but ended up with

[boots]

Hi ZeroFill.

I see you just updated your fix to almost the same thing I just came up with. The fix I used to correct my original post uses a string instead of an array to achieve the same result.

Thanks for pointing this out!

[ZeroFill]