How To Fix Performance Problems In PHP Applications

PHP offers a programming model that is easy to understand for web developers. It makes repetitive developments and simple debugging, producing large productivity increases. PHP has gained a bad reputation for slow performance and security issues, which leads to questions about its future as a programming language. In this article, we will learn to fix performance problems in PHP.

Misconfiguring the webserver

Unlike other programming languages ​​where web servers are part of the language, PHP runs on the webserver. Apache HTTP server and Nginx are the two most commonly used. Web servers are other layers that need to be ventured by PHP developers. From choosing the process model in Apache to set PHP-FPM (fast process manager) when using Nginx, there are several tuning options.

For example, developers need to configure the number of worker processes to be made and how often recycling it. If they don’t have enough workers available, their users must queue and wait for a free worker. If any company has too many workers, they can run out of memories during a busy time. Developers can use the amount of memory used in applications and resources available on their servers as a guide to selecting the number of workers.

Poor security practice

PHP allows developers to combine various programming paradigms and switch between HTML code and PHP smoothly. Without stiffness, this can quickly produce a messy code that is difficult to maintain. This flexibility is one reason PHP is an excellent language for beginners. Still, it can easily be a disadvantage that can expose applications to security issues such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL (SQLI) injection.

Developers can mitigate these risks using a mature framework, tools, and libraries. Using a template library like a branch helps prevent cross-site scripts by automatically encoding all variables displayed in the template. Using the Mapper Relational Mapper (ORM) object or database library can prevent SQL injection using the prepared statement.

Failing to use strict types and type hinting

PHP has a forgiving-type system. Historically, PHP has liked the forced type rather than creating errors. This can cause a trap like dividing numbers with words and getting “useful” results, but it also makes a runtime error. To help prevent this kind of error, the developer must enable “strict_types” and use different tools as part of their development process. These tools analyze the code statically. By looking at what type of data is used throughout their application, they can show potential problems before becoming an actual problem that affects the user.

Real-time metrics for PHP applications

By identifying the threshold that is useful for measuring PHP applications. Developers can easily identify when errors occur or if performance problems arise. With monitoring Sentry performance for PHP, real-time metrics allow developers to quickly understand customer satisfaction based on application response time for their interaction.