Performance increase using Smarty + Caching?

Question

Hey,

I am going to start using codeigniter, but since it only offers to cache everything or nothing (which would not work, because I have logins, and other areas which cannot be cached) I was wondering whether it is a good idea to use Smarty.

The only concern I have in this question is speed. (No yes/no smarty general question.)

My Question: CodeIgniter with some db queries (blog, loading data for pages from the database, etc.)

vs.

CodeIgniter + same db + smarty + partial caching (and of course if smarty->is_cached(.tpl) do not do any db requests)

What is fast, what should I use. Are there any smarty-benchmarks I did not see? Starting at how many db request, would you say, smarty improves performance noticeable considering you have to also load the smarty library?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Smarty or any template system is another layer of complexity. It comes with overload not with performance increase, even when cached. Its advantages are others, like easiness to develop with.

Answer 2

Premature optimization is the root of all evil. I'd suggest not to worry about caching unless your application is done. Then see how it performs by profiling it with xdebug or Zend_Debugger and do some load tests with ab. Use an opcode cache if you can.

If you think the app is too slow then, consider page/partials caching. You dont want caching for caching's sake, but to locate and remove bottlenecks. If you feel comfortable with Smarty and want to use it as template engine, well, use it. If you dont need a template engine, you could also use Zend_Cache with APC or memcached for caching.

Answer 3

Why not implementing your own caching method? It's not that hard.

I'm using both Smarty and CodeIgniter in different projects. They are both very fine libraries, but I've never felt the need to combine them.

A caching method could use CI's hooks: pre_system to see, if there is a whole page cached, post_controller to intercept the calls to the views and ... just scanning the CI user guide. There is a hook 'cache_override'. I suppose you could use this too.