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Why is App::import('*', '*');, as well as model loading takes as long as ~3-5ms?

This is quite annoying when you have around 100 required models for a page; it'll take more or less 300ms just to load the core and the models.

Furthermore, I saw that this load time is not decreased when a cache system is enabled.

Have you an idea why it's so long and another to decrease this time for an application that need much models?

Thanks in advance!

EDIT : When I use the file cache system (whit debug mode to 0) I see that the creation date property of the file generated by the cache is always the same as the last time I generate a page. This means that the cache is regenerating the model files every time (despite of the debug mode set to 0). Is that normal?

EDIT2 : When I open the model cache files with Notepad++, there is trailing "nul" flags at the begining that I don't have in other cache files (like persistent).

EDIT3 : Long story short : Why is the loading time of a Model as long if a cache system is on as it would be without this cache system?

tereško
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Sébastien
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  • FWIW, CakePHP 2 fixed this using lazy loading. Are you sure debug mode is off? Cache is disabled in debug. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3402246/cache-file-model-cakephp – Brad Koch Dec 24 '11 at 15:31
  • I'm using CakePHP 2 and my pages/actions uses most of the models so lazy loading or not it's pretty much the same. Yes, debug mode is off and cache is enabled. – Sébastien Dec 24 '11 at 15:53
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    Just for clarification, this page requires querying 100 models and the bottleneck is indeed the load time? Just making sure you're fixing the right problem. – Brad Koch Dec 24 '11 at 16:14
  • No, it's more around 30 models. Look at this page, I'm sure it rely on more than 15 models (to handel users, tags, question, edits, comments, responses, liked, related,...). I just made an observation (3-5ms by model for a fast server) and would like to know the reason for that and hope that there is a solution to fix it. – Sébastien Dec 24 '11 at 16:39

3 Answers3

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Really, I see Tag, User, Question, Comment, Advertisement and a few custom find queries for each. (This page). There is no need for a liked, or shared, or those attributes to be models in this case. If you get that granular then you have to expect to mitigate loading issues.

If you need to use 30 models in one page then you are doing something illogical or your use case is far outside the norm.

Abba Bryant
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Couple of things to note:

App:import('', '') is loading everything - so that alone will hog resources. If you have a page with 30 plus model queries - firstly get the data via their relationships. Don't use $this->loadModel() or the $uses array; that isn't how CakePHP was designed to be used. Check my response here on a better practice:

cakephp: how to access another model, which has no association

Then you can further limit the data fetched (which increases speed):

How to limit the fields of the associated models using find method

Re: Cache - read up on it in the CakePHP book as it sets out some good examples. If you are struggling, it may be worth switching over to MemCache or another dedicated system instead of the CakePHP flat files.

Community
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Shaz MJ
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  • I'm already using APC, but anyway, I want something that isn't very long even for the very first request. When I say App:import('*', '*'), The star mean wildcard for here, not for CakePHP, replace it by wathever you want ;) – Sébastien Dec 27 '11 at 14:11
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Optimization is a relative task. Your time and resources are best invested in optimizing the part of the application measured to be consuming the most resources. If your bottleneck is only 3ms, then I have a hard time seeing why you need to be doing any optimization at all.

That being said, if you're just a really curious person intent on finding an answer to your question I would encourage you to sit down and do some profiling of the internal code yourself to break down what is contributing to the execution time. The CakePHP mailing list might be another helpful resource in understanding how the Cake internals work.

Brad Koch
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  • This is 3-5ms for each models, so, it's more around 100ms/request for all the needed models and because this is the same for almost every request, I think that this is something that really consume much resources. – Sébastien Dec 27 '11 at 14:08
  • I understand that, but I'm trying to get you to ask yourself a question: Is it worth spending a week of my time on? Will this provide my users the most marginal utility? Most likely no, but in the event it is, the only way you can resolve this is to do the profiling and figure out what Cake is doing in those 3ms. – Brad Koch Dec 27 '11 at 15:22
  • As an aside, as @Abba said 30 models is a lot. It sounds like you have a bigger design problem that trumps this. – Brad Koch Dec 27 '11 at 15:29
  • I really don't think so. My app is a kind of social network so I have many different data to handle on a page. I have the users data, the users and their relations with other users, their relations with the page, their comments on the page, their ratings for tha page, the data of the page (the data of the page is divided in two tables, common data and localized data ; furthermore the data is versionned), the tags for the page, the languages for the page, and so on... – Sébastien Dec 29 '11 at 10:20