Optimising the Zend Framework

I'm trying to get as much performance as I can out of my application, which uses the Zend Framework.

I'm considering using the Zend Server, with APC enabled. However, I need to know a few things first.

Is there any benefit of using Zend Server + Zend Framework, or should I just use any ordinary system to host this?

Shamil

My tips for faster ZF (try from top to bottom):

Optimize include path

• zend path first
• models next
• rest at the end

Use PHP 5.5 with OPCache enabled [NEW]

• I can't stress this enough
• gains around 50%

Cache table metadata

• should be cached even if no other caching is needed
• one of our application performance improved by ~30% on Oracle server ;)

Favour viewHelpers over using action() view helper

• create view helper that access your model
• or pass only the data from model and format them with view helpers

Use classmap autoloader

• since ZF1.11
• preferably with stripped require_once calls

Minimize path stacks

• there are a lot of path stacks in ZF
  • form elements
  • view helpers
  • action helpers
• each path stack lookup means stat call = performance loss
• default classes are more and more expensive with every path on stack

Strip require_once

• strip require_once from Zend's classes in favour of autoloading using find & sed

Favour render() over partial() view helper

• no new view instance is created
• you need to set variables outside the rendered view scope, inside the main view!
• you can also replace partialLoop() with foreach + render()

Cache anything possible

• small chunks that require lot of work and change seldomly (like dynamic menus)
• use profiler to find low-hanging fruit
  • what you think is slow may not really be so slow
• cache everything that can have cache set statically
  • see manual - Zend_Locale::setCache(), Zend_Currency::setCache(), Zend_Db_Table::setDefaultMetadataCache(), configs...

Never use view helper action() or action helper actionStack()

• Never use them unless 100% needed - for example for complicated data output, but mind the performance loss they pose
• They create whole new dispatch loop and are performance killers!

Disable viewRenderer

• take care of view rendering yourself

Try my superlimunal plugin

• it merges included classes to one long file to minimize stat calls
• get if from GitHub
  • it's port from ZF2 version from EDP
  • but beware - it's not tested in production yet, use with care
• measure performance gain
  • there was a loss for me on slow HDD and all ZF classes in it
  • try minimizing it with strip whitespace function

Server-side file minification

• It makes sense for really big files - HDD is always the bottleneck
• Even micro-optimization works fine sometimes
  • classmap with all ZF classes' paths is HUGE, striping whitespace and replacing long variables with $a and $b brought performance gain when having "dry" opcode cache and HDD under pressure.

Any opcode cache is of course a must have ;) (APC, ZendOptimizer, etc.)