Does the phpdriver for mongoDB provide a feature for starting the connection on demand - only.
Maybe this can save some load, although persistent connection is already really fast.
However, if there is a chance to optimize the application, i'd try this, too.
The alternative, calling the function to connect only on demand seems to be a bit tricky and makes my source very redundant.
The link H Hatfield posted addresses this question. Mongo::__construct() has a connect option that defaults to true, but you can specify false to delay the connection. The documentation isn't clear how lazy this is, as it only guarantees that the constructor will return without waiting for a connection to be established.
That said, you would be better off relying on persistent connections, which are being actively improved. I wouldn't be surprised if the lazy connection option was removed in a future major version of the driver.
On the documentation page when initiating the Manager it says:
this constructor performs no I/O. Connections will be initialized on demand, when the first operation is executed. So this is actually what you need already.
