How to test a web application for memory leaks?

Question

How do we test a web application for the memory leaks? How much does it contribute to the overall performance of the site? Please suggest any tool which can help us test the web application for memory leaks.

Answer 1

Which platform are you developing on? This makes all of the difference in the world. A webapp done in Django/Python is going to test a lot differently than an ASP.NET site. You're better off searching for profiling tools based on the platform you're developing for.

Answer 2

If you platform is java then I would recommend VisualVM.

https://visualvm.dev.java.net/

You can use this to monitor the heap memory usage of the JVM and when you think you have a problem you can create a heap dump that you can browse to look for objects that have not been released.

Be aware that many java web frameworks implement pooling of some resources, so it may be normal for some objects not to be released after they have been used.

Answer 3

for php, you can use xdebug and kcachegrind.