The tick handler is intended for code profiling. You can use it to determine the number of time units (ticks) that a chunk of code takes. And you can vary the tick frequency so profiling doesn't impact your specific code too much. A tick handler can gather other useful performance data, besides just counting ticks.
You can use the tick handler to poll that your connection is a alive, but this will block your entire script. Polling connection status is no substitute for checking return values, and using timeouts on any function that connects to an external system.
declare
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
L'élément de langage declare sert à ajouter des directives d'exécutions dans un bloc de code. La syntaxe de declare est similaire à la syntaxe des autres fonctions de contrôle :
declare (directive)
commandes
L'expression directive permet de contrôler l'intervention du bloc declare. Actuellement, seulement deux directives sont reconnues : la directive ticks (voir plus bas pour plus de détails sur les ticks) et la directive d'encodage encoding (Voir plus bas pour plus de détails sur la directive encoding).
Note: La directive encoding a été ajoutée en PHP 5.3.0.
L'expression commandes du bloc de declare sera exécutée. Comment elle sera exécutée, et quels effets cela aura, dépend de la directive utilisée dans le bloc directive.
La structure declare peut aussi être utilisée dans le contexte global. Elle affecte alors tout le code qui la suit (même si le fichier avec declare a été inclus après, ça n'affecte pas le fichier parent).
<?php
// Ces déclarations sont identiques.
// Vous pouvez utiliser ceci
declare(ticks=1) {
// script entier ici
}
// ou ceci
declare(ticks=1);
// script entier ici
?>
Ticks
Un tick est un événement qui intervient toutes les N
commandes bas niveau tickables, exécutées par l'analyseur dans le bloc de
declare. La valeur de N est spécifiée
par la syntaxe ticks=N dans le bloc de
directive declare.
Toutes les commandes ne sont pas tickables. Typiquement, les expressions de condition et les expressions d'arguments ne sont pas tickables.
Un événement qui intervient à chaque tick est spécifié avec la fonction register_tick_function(). Reportez-vous à l'exemple ci-dessous pour plus de détails. Notez que plus d'un événement peut intervenir par tick.
Exemple #1 Exemple d'utilisation des ticks
<?php
declare(ticks=1);
// A function called on each tick event
function tick_handler()
{
echo "tick_handler() called\n";
}
register_tick_function('tick_handler');
$a = 1;
if ($a > 0) {
$a += 2;
print($a);
}
?>
Exemple #2 Exemple d'utilisation des ticks
<?php
function tick_handler()
{
echo "tick_handler() called\n";
}
$a = 1;
tick_handler();
if ($a > 0) {
$a += 2;
tick_handler();
print($a);
tick_handler();
}
tick_handler();
?>
Voir aussi register_tick_function() et unregister_tick_function().
L'encodage
L'encodage d'un script peut être spécifié par script en utilisant la directive encoding.
Exemple #3 Déclaration d'un encodage pour un script
<?php
declare(encoding='ISO-8859-1');
// le code
?>
Combinée avec les espaces de nommage, la seule syntaxe valable pour declare est declare(encoding='...'); où ... est la valeur de l'encodage. declare(encoding='...') {} soulèvera une erreur d'interprétation dans le cas des espaces de nommage.
La valeur d'encodage est ignorée en PHP 5.3 à moins que PHP soit compilé avec --enable-zend-multibyte.
Notez que PHP ne vous renseignera sur l'activation ou non de --enable-zend-multibyte qu'au moyen de phpinfo().
Voir aussi zend.script_encoding.
check loaded server connection
<?php
$connection = false;
function checkConnection( $connectionWaitingTime = 3 )
{
// check connection & time
global $time,$connection;
if( ($t = (time() - $time)) >= $waitingTime && !$connection){
echo ("<p> Server not responding for <strong>$t</strong> seconds !! </p>");
die("Connection aborted");
}
}
register_tick_function("checkConnection");
$time = time();
declare (ticks=1)
{
while( true ){ // connecting to loaded server
}
$connection = true ;
}
?>
It's amazing how many people didn't grasp the concept here. Note the wording in the documentation. It states that the tick handler is called every n native execution cycles. That means native instructions, not including system calls (i'm guessing). This can give you a very good idea if you need to optimize a particular part of your script, since you can measure quite effectively how many native instructions are in your actual code.
A good profiler would take that into account, and force you, the developer, to include calls to the profiler as you're entering and leaving every function. That way you'd be able to keep an eye on how many cycles it took each function to complete. Independent of time.
That is extremely powerful, and not to be underestimated. A good solution would allow aggregate stats, so the total time in a function would be counted, including inside called functions.
Note that the two methods for calling declare are not identical.
Method 1:
<?php
// Print "tick" with a timestamp and optional suffix.
function do_tick($str = '') {
list($sec, $usec) = explode(' ', microtime());
printf("[%.4f] Tick.%s\n", $sec + $usec, $str);
}
register_tick_function('do_tick');
// Tick once before declaring so we have a point of reference.
do_tick('--start--');
// Method 1
declare(ticks=1);
while(1) sleep(1);
/* Output:
[1234544435.7160] Tick.--start--
[1234544435.7161] Tick.
[1234544435.7162] Tick.
[1234544436.7163] Tick.
[1234544437.7166] Tick.
*/
?>
Method 2:
<?php
// Print "tick" with a timestamp and optional suffix.
function do_tick($str = '') {
list($sec, $usec) = explode(' ', microtime());
printf("[%.4f] Tick.%s\n", $sec + $usec, $str);
}
register_tick_function('do_tick');
// Tick once before declaring so we have a point of reference.
do_tick('--start--');
// Method 2
declare(ticks=1) {
while(1) sleep(1);
}
/* Output:
[1234544471.6486] Tick.--start--
[1234544472.6489] Tick.
[1234544473.6490] Tick.
[1234544474.6492] Tick.
[1234544475.6493] Tick.
*/
?>
Notice that when using {} after declare, do_tick wasn't auto-called until about 1 second after we entered the declare {} block. However when not using the {}, do_tick was auto-called not once but twice immediately after calling declare();.
I'm assuming this is due to how PHP handles ticking internally. That is, declare() without the {} seems to trigger more low-level instructions which in turn fires tick a few times (if ticks=1) in the act of declaring.
Code evaluation script which uses debug_backtrace() to get execution time in ns, relative current line number, function, file, and calling function info on each tick, and shove it all in $script_stats array. See debug_backtrace manual to customize what info is collected.
Warning: this will exhaust allowed memory very easily, so adjust tick counter according to the size of your code. Also, array_key_exists checking on debug_backtrace arrays is removed here only to keep this example simple, but should be added to avoid a large number of resulting PHP Notice errors.
<?php
$script_stats = array();
$time = microtime(true);
function track_stats(){
global $script_stats,$time;
$trace = debug_backtrace();
$exe_time = (microtime(true) - $time) * 1000;
$func_args = implode(", ",$trace[1]["args"]);
$script_stats[] = array(
"current_time" => microtime(true),
"memory" => memory_get_usage(true),
"file" => $trace[1]["file"].': '.$trace[1]["line"],
"function" => $trace[1]["function"].'('.$func_args.')',
"called_by" => $trace[2]["function"].' in '.$trace[2]["file"].': '.$trace[2]["line"],
"ns" => $exe_time
);
$time = microtime(true);
}
declare(ticks = 1);
register_tick_function("track_stats");
// the rest of your project code
// output $script_stats into a html table or something
?>
If you misspell the directive, you won't get any error or warning. The declare block will simply act as a nest for statements:
<?php
declare(tocks="four hundred")
{
// Has no affect on code and produces
// no error or warning.
}
?>
Tested in php 5.2.5 on XPsp2
rosen_ivanov's solution can be replaced by a simple call to memory_get_peak_usage() if you're running at least PHP 5.2.0
As Chris already noted, ticks doesn't make your script multi-threaded, but they are still great. I use them mainly for profiling - for example, placing the following at the very beginning of the script allows you to monitor its memory usage:
<?php
function profiler($return=false) {
static $m=0;
if ($return) return "$m bytes";
if (($mem=memory_get_usage())>$m) $m = $mem;
}
register_tick_function('profiler');
declare(ticks=1);
/*
Your code here
*/
echo profiler(true);
?>
This approach is more accurate than calling memory_get_usage only in the end of the script. It has some performance overhead though :)
The scope of the declare() call if used without a block is a little unpredictable, in my experience. It appears that if placed in a method or function, it may not apply to the calls that ensue, like the following:
<?php
function a()
{
declare(ticks=2);
b();
}
function b()
{
// The declare may not apply here, sometimes.
}
?>
So, if all of a sudden the signals are getting ignored, check this. At the risk of losing the ability to make a mathematical science out of placing a number of activities at varying durations of ticks like many people have chosen to do, I've found it simple to just put this at the top of the code, and just make it global.
as i read about ticks the first time i thought "wtf, useless crap" - but then i discovered some usefull application...
you can declare a tick-function which checks each n executions of your script whether the connection is still alive or not, very usefull for some kind of scripts to decrease serverload
<?php
function check_connection()
{ if (connection_aborted())
{ // do something here, e.g. close database connections
// (or use a shutdown function for this
exit; }
}
register_tick_function("connection");
declare (ticks=20)
{
// put your PHP-Script here
// you may increase/decrease the number of ticks
}
?>
Also note that PHP is run in a single thread and so everything it does will be one line of code at a time. I'm not aware of any true threading support in PHP, the closest you can get is to fork.
so, declare tick doens't "multi-thread" at all, it is simply is a way to automaticaly call a function every n-lines of code.
This is a very simple example using ticks to execute a external script to show rx/tx data from the server
<?php
function traf(){
passthru( './traf.sh' );
echo "<br />\n";
flush(); // keeps it flowing to the browser...
sleep( 1 );
}
register_tick_function( "traf" );
declare( ticks=1 ){
while( true ){} // to keep it running...
}
?>
contents of traf.sh:
# Shows TX/RX for eth0 over 1sec
#!/bin/bash
TX1=`cat /proc/net/dev | grep "eth0" | cut -d: -f2 | awk '{print $9}'`
RX1=`cat /proc/net/dev | grep "eth0" | cut -d: -f2 | awk '{print $1}'`
sleep 1
TX2=`cat /proc/net/dev | grep "eth0" | cut -d: -f2 | awk '{print $9}'`
RX2=`cat /proc/net/dev | grep "eth0" | cut -d: -f2 | awk '{print $1}'`
echo -e "TX: $[ $TX2 - $TX1 ] bytes/s \t RX: $[ $RX2 - $RX1 ] bytes/s"
#--= the end. =--
<?php
ob_end_clean();
ob_implicit_flush(1);
function a() {
for($i=0;$i<=100000;$i++) { }
echo "function a() ";
}
function b() {
for($i=0;$i<=100000;$i++) { }
echo "function b() ";
}
register_tick_function ("a");
register_tick_function ("b");
declare (ticks=4)
{
while(true)
{
sleep(1);
echo "\n<br><b>".time()."</b><br>\n";;
}
}
?>
You will see that a() and b() are slowing down this process. They are in fact not executed every second as expected. So this function is not a real alternative for multithreading using some slow functions..there is no difference to this way: while (true) { a(); b(); sleep(1); }
If i use ticks i must declare all functions before i call the function.
example:
Dosn't work
<?php
function ticks() {
echo "tick";
}
register_tick_function("ticks");
declare (ticks=1) 1;
echo "";
echo "";
foo(); // Call to undefined function.
function foo() {
echo "foo";
}
?>
Work
<?php
function ticks() {
echo "tick";
}
register_tick_function("ticks");
//declare (ticks=1) 1;
echo "";
echo "";
foo();
function foo() {
echo "foo";
}
?>
win2k : PHP 4.3.0 (cgi-fcgi)
Correction to above note:
Apparently, the end brace '}' at the end of the statement causes a tick.
So using
------------
declare (ticks=1) echo "1 tick after this prints";
------------
gives the expected behavior of causing 1 tick.
Note: the tick is issued after the statement executes.
Also, after playing around with this, I found that it is not really the multi-tasking I had expected. It behaves the same as simply calling the functions. I.e. each function must finish before passing the baton to the next function. They do not run in parallel.
It also seems that they always run in the order in which they were registered.
So,
<?php
------------
# register tick functions
register_tick_function ("a");
register_tick_function ("b");
# make the tick functions run
declare (ticks=1);
?>
------------
is equivalent to
------------
a();
b();
------------
It is simply a convenient way to have functions called periodically while some other code is being executed. I.e. you could use it to periodically check the status of something and then exit the script or do something else based on the status.
Here is an example of multi-tasking / multi-threading:
<?php
# declare functions
function a() {
echo "a";
}
function b() {
echo "b";
}
# register tick functions
register_tick_function ("a");
register_tick_function ("b");
# make the tick functions run
declare (ticks=1);
# that's all there is to it.
?>
Notes:
This will make functions a and b run once each at the same time.
If you try:
declare (ticks=1) {
1;
}
They will run twice each. That is because it seems to be an undocumented fact that there is always an extra tick.
Therefore:
declare (ticks=2) {
1;
}
Will cause them to run once.
