Store text: array vs constant to best performance

Question

I'm coding a multi language website. The text for each page is loaded from a MySQL database and should be assigned to an array or constant to insert it into the web content.

I would like to know if it is better, to save memory and for best performance, the use of constants or arrays to store the text. i.e.

foreach ($db_text_object as $t){
  $text["$t->key"] = $t->text;
}

or:

foreach ($db_text_object as $t){
  define($t->key, $t->text);
}

To be used as:

echo $text['mytext'];

or:

echo mytext;

Any other comment about advantage or disadvantage of each method will be appreciated.

Thank you.

Why not benchmark both and see? You can run php from the command line so you do not have to manually reload the website multiple times. — merlin2011
– merlin2011, Commented Apr 16, 2014 at 8:52

deceze · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-16 08:54:00Z

2

I don't think either will have a significant impact on performance, especially since the bottleneck will be getting all the data from the database every single time. If you're really interested in whether it makes a difference: try it both ways and measure it.

When you're done doing that, do it right by using a native extension like gettext, which was made for this exact purpose, does internal caching of binary translation files and comes with a whole ecosystem of tools supporting the translation workflow.

answered Apr 16, 2014 at 8:54

deceze♦

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1 Comment

skeptic Over a year ago

Thank you for the advise, but gettext is not a valid solution for my current project. Finaly I'v used arrays.

Community · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-20 09:12:55Z

1

The performance difference will be too trivial or too minute

I personally go with the arrays, since you would be able to access it in a simpler way..

Benchmarking results...

<?php


$db_text_object=[1,2,3,4,5];
$start = microtime(true);
foreach ($db_text_object as $k=>$v){
    $text[$k] = $v;
}
echo "Constant Performance: " . (microtime(true) - $start) . "\n";

$start = microtime(true);
foreach ($db_text_object as $k=>$v){
    define($k, $v);
}
echo "Array Performance: " . (microtime(true) - $start) . "\n";

OUTPUT:

Constant Performance: 1.9073486328125E-5 
Array Performance: 1.3113021850586E-5

Benchmarking Demo at CodeViper

edited Jun 20, 2020 at 9:12

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Apr 16, 2014 at 8:58

Shankar Narayana Damodaran

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