bbc / programmes-xhprof

XHProf bundle for Symfony 2

README

What is XHProf?

XHProf is a hierarchical profiler for PHP. It reports function-level call counts and inclusive and exclusive metrics such as wall (elapsed) time, CPU time and memory usage. A function's profile can be broken down by callers or callees. The raw data collection component is implemented in C as a PHP Zend extension called xhprof. XHProf has a simple HTML based user interface (written in PHP). The browser based UI for viewing profiler results makes it easy to view results or to share results with peers. A callgraph image view is also supported.

See official documentation

What does this Symfony 2 Bundle do?

This bundle helps you to easily use the XHProf bundle with the web debug toolbar in Symfony 2. With Symfony 2.3 and newer, it can also profile console commands. It comes with github://preinheimer/xhprof bundled, you just have to create a link in your project's web folder to vendor/bbc/programmes-xhprof/preiheimer/xhprof.

Installation

For a few examples of how to setup this bundle, check https://github.com/bbc/programmes-frontend/tree/profiling-build or https://github.com/bbc/programmes-clifton/tree/profiling-build. The compare view is quite useful to see the setup bits.

Make sure you have XHProf installed. If you are on a mac you can easily install it via Macports sudo port install php5-xhprof

If you are using PHP 7 you can use the Tideways XHProf fork.

1. Composer

Add the following dependencies to your projects composer.json file:

"require": {
    "jns/xhprof-bundle": "1.0.*@dev",
    "lox/xhprof": "dev-master@dev"
}

Of course, you have to install xhprof library (or for PHP 7 the the Tideways XHProf fork) in your server. At this moment, ext-xhprof is not required because your application could be deployed to a server without xhprof.

2. Old way by adding to your vendor/bundles/ dir

3. To install the bundle, place it in the src/Jns/Bundle directory of your project

(so that it lives at src/Jns/Bundle/XhprofBundle). You can do this by adding the bundle as a submodule, cloning it, or simply downloading the source.

$ git submodule add https://github.com/jonaswouters/XhprofBundle.git src/Jns/Bundle/XhprofBundle

2. Add the Jns namespace to your autoloader

If this is the first Jns bundle in your Symfony 2 project, you'll need to add the Jns namespace to your autoloader. This file is usually located at app/autoload.php.

$loader->registerNamespaces(array(
    'Jns' => __DIR__.'/../src'
    // ...
));

Initializing the bundle

To initialize the bundle, you'll need to add it in your kernel. This file is usually located at app/AppKernel.php. Loading it only in your dev environment is recommended.

public function registerBundles()
{
    // ...

    if (in_array($this->getEnvironment(), array('dev', 'test'))) {
        // ...
        $bundles[] = new Jns\Bundle\XhprofBundle\JnsXhprofBundle();
    }
}

Configuration

Summary

Setting	Explanation	Default
location_web	Link to xhprof GUI, used in the debug bar	http://xhprof
manager_registry	Doctrine's registry manager	doctrine
entity_manager	Entity manager that has the Detail entity	default
entity_class	Detail entity, store's the profile data in the database	Jns\Bundle\XhprofBundle\Entity\XhprofDetail
enable_xhgui	Enable Xhgui. Without this, nothing gets stored in the database	False
exclude_patterns	URL patterns to be excluded during profiling
sample_size	Probability of profiling. The larger the number, the smaller the chance	1
enabled	Enable or disable profiling	False
require_extension_exists	Require the extension exists to run	True
skip_builtin_functions	Don't profile PHP built-in functions	False
request_query_argument	Only activate on requests that have this argument	False
response_header	Custom Response header	X-Xhprof-Url
server_id	ID of the server you are profiling	default
command	on: Always profile, off: Never profile, option: only profile if option specified in command_option_name is given	option
command_option_name	If "command" is set to "option", this is the name of the additional option that all commands get	xhprof
command_exclude_patterns	List of regular expressions to match commands that are not profiled

Configure the XHProf locations.

The Bundle comes preconfigured for the macports php5-xhprof default installation, with the xhprof web located at http://xhprof.localhost. To change these settings for your environment you can override the defaults by defining the following settings in your config. The config is usually located at app/config/config_dev.yml.

jns_xhprof:
    location_web:    http://xhprof.localhost
    enabled:         true

Do not forget to set enabled to true, or the profiler will never be activated.

Using XHGui

XHGui is a GUI for the XHProf PHP extension, using a database backend, and pretty graphs to make it easy to use and interpret. The XHProf bundle supports using XHGui to display the results. To use, install XHGui, and add the following two settings to the configuration, usually located at app/config/config.yml:

jns_xhprof:
    entity_manager:  <name_of_entity_manager> (defaults to default)
    entity_class:    Acme\FooBundle\Entity\XhprofDetail
    enable_xhgui:    true

Create your class Acme\FooBundle\Entity\XhprofDetail:

<?php

namespace Acme\FooBundle\Entity;

use Jns\Bundle\XhprofBundle\Entity\XhprofDetail as BaseXhprofDetail;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping as ORM;

/**
 * @ORM\Entity
 * @ORM\Table(name="details")
 */
class XhprofDetail extends BaseXhprofDetail
{
    /**
     * @var integer $id
     *
     * @ORM\Column(name="id", type="string", unique=true, length=17, nullable=false)
     * @ORM\Id
     */
    protected $id;
}

If you only have one entity manager defined, you don't need to set it here. This setting is for the case where you are using a seperate profiling database for XHGui (highly recommended).

Specifying a Sample Size

You can specify a sample size for profiling. This is useful to collect random samples of real requests in production environments. If you have plenty of requests, you really don't want to profile all of them.

The sample size is set as a probability for profiling, so for example, if you set the sample size to 2, then on average, every second request will be profiled. Of course, in production you want to set it to a much higher value. Defaults to 1, so that every request will be profiled.

jns_xhprof:
    sample_size: 2

Disable built-in functions

You can skip all built-in (internal) functions.

jns_xhprof:
    skip_builtin_functions: true

Web request profiling

Enabling XHProf only for requests with a trigger parameter

You can specify a request_query_argument parameter to have XHProf only activate on requests that have this argument. This can be useful to profile a production system without impacting other requests too much.

jns_xhprof:
    request_query_argument: "__xhprof"

Enabling XHProf only for matching pattern request

It's possible to configure exclude_patterns parameter in configuration. XHProf would be enabled only for requests which will match these patterns.

jns_xhprof:
    exclude_patterns: ['/css/', '/js/']

Using XHProf with disabled Symfony Profiler

The most common case is the prod mode. Symfony Profiler is disabled by default in this mode. It is possible to configure XHProf Bundle to send custom Response header with XHProf web UI URL for the current token. Header name could be configured with response_header parameter in bundle configuration. Empty value disables this header completely. Default header name is X-Xhprof-Url.

Console command profiling

Enabling console command profiling

You can set the profiling of console commands to on, off or option.

• on: all commands are profiled according to sample_size;
• off: no commands are profiled (but web requests might be profiled);
• option: commands get an additional option to trigger profiling.

jns_xhprof:
    command: "off"

Enabling XHProf with a specific option only

When you set command to option, you can specify an option name that will trigger a profiler run on a command. That option will automatically be available on all commands.

jns_xhprof:
    command: "option"
    command_option_name: xhprof

Now you can profile a command with

$ app/console acme:my:command --xhprof

Excluding some commands from profiling

When using the on setting, you might want to filter what commands get profiled. If the name filter matches, the profiler will never trigger.

jns_xhprof:
    command_exclude_patterns: ['acme:', ':debug']