subject: 9 Useful PHP Functions and Features You Need to Know [print this page] 9 Useful PHP Functions and Features You Need to Know
Even after using PHP for years, we stumble upon functions and features that we did not know about. Some of these can be quite useful, yet underused. With that in mind, I've compiled a list of nine incredibly useful PHP functions and features that you should be familiar with.
1. Functions with Arbitrary Number of Arguments
You may already know that PHP allows you to define functions with optional arguments. But there is also a method for allowing completely arbitrary number of function arguments.
First, here is an example with just optional arguments:
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// function with 2 optional arguments
function foo($arg1 = '', $arg2 = '') {
echo "arg1: $arg1
";
echo "arg2: $arg2
";
}
foo('hello','world');
/* prints:
arg1: hello
arg2: world
*/
foo();
/* prints:
arg1:
arg2:
*/
Now, let's see how we can build a function that accepts any number of arguments. This time we are going to utilize func_get_args():
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// yes, the argument list can be empty
function foo() {
// returns an array of all passed arguments
$args = func_get_args();
foreach ($args as $k => $v) {
echo "arg".($k+1).": $v
";
}
}
foo();
/* prints nothing */
foo('hello');
/* prints
arg1: hello
*/
foo('hello', 'world', 'again');
/* prints
arg1: hello
arg2: world
arg3: again
*/
2. Using Glob() to Find Files
Many PHP functions have long and descriptive names. However it may be hard to tell what a function named glob() does unless you are already familiar with that term from elsewhere.
Think of it like a more capable version of the scandir() function. It can let you search for files by using patterns.
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// get all php files
$files = glob('*.php');
print_r($files);
/* output looks like:
Array
(
[0] => phptest.php
[1] => pi.php
[2] => post_output.php
[3] => test.php
)
*/
You can fetch multiple file types like this:
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// get all php files AND txt files
$files = glob('*.{php,txt}', GLOB_BRACE);
print_r($files);
/* output looks like:
Array
(
[0] => phptest.php
[1] => pi.php
[2] => post_output.php
[3] => test.php
[4] => log.txt
[5] => test.txt
)
*/
Note that the files can actually be returned with a path, depending on your query:
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$files = glob('../images/a*.jpg');
print_r($files);
/* output looks like:
Array
(
[0] => ../images/apple.jpg
[1] => ../images/art.jpg
)
*/
If you want to get the full path to each file, you can just call the realpath() function on the returned values:
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$files = glob('../images/a*.jpg');
// applies the function to each array element
$files = array_map('realpath',$files);
print_r($files);
/* output looks like:
Array
(
[0] => C:wampwwwimagesapple.jpg
[1] => C:wampwwwimagesart.jpg
)
*/
3. Memory Usage Information
By observing the memory usage of your scripts, you may be able optimize your code better.
PHP has a garbage collector and a pretty complex memory manager. The amount of memory being used by your script. can go up and down during the execution of a script. To get the current memory usage, we can use the memory_get_usage() function, and to get the highest amount of memory used at any point, we can use the memory_get_peak_usage() function.
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echo "Initial: ".memory_get_usage()." bytes
";
/* prints
Initial: 361400 bytes
*/
// let's use up some memory
for ($i = 0; $i < 100000; $i++) {
$array []= md5($i);
}
// let's remove half of the array
for ($i = 0; $i < 100000; $i++) {
unset($array[$i]);
}
echo "Final: ".memory_get_usage()." bytes
";
/* prints
Final: 885912 bytes
*/
echo "Peak: ".memory_get_peak_usage()." bytes
";
/* prints
Peak: 13687072 bytes
*/
4. CPU Usage Information
For this, we are going to utilize the getrusage() function. Keep in mind that this is not available on Windows platforms.
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print_r(getrusage());
/* prints
Array
(
[ru_oublock] => 0
[ru_inblock] => 0
[ru_msgsnd] => 2
[ru_msgrcv] => 3
[ru_maxrss] => 12692
[ru_ixrss] => 764
[ru_idrss] => 3864
[ru_minflt] => 94
[ru_majflt] => 0
[ru_nsignals] => 1
[ru_nvcsw] => 67
[ru_nivcsw] => 4
[ru_nswap] => 0
[ru_utime.tv_usec] => 0
[ru_utime.tv_sec] => 0
[ru_stime.tv_usec] => 6269
[ru_stime.tv_sec] => 0
)
*/
That may look a bit cryptic unless you already have a system administration background. Here is the explanation of each value (you don't need to memorize these):
ru_oublock: block output operations
ru_inblock: block input operations
ru_msgsnd: messages sent
ru_msgrcv: messages received
ru_maxrss: maximum resident set size
ru_ixrss: integral shared memory size
ru_idrss: integral unshared data size
ru_minflt: page reclaims
ru_majflt: page faults
ru_nsignals: signals received
ru_nvcsw: voluntary context switches
ru_nivcsw: involuntary context switches
ru_nswap: swaps
ru_utime.tv_usec: user time used (microseconds)
ru_utime.tv_sec: user time used (seconds)
ru_stime.tv_usec: system time used (microseconds)
ru_stime.tv_sec: system time used (seconds)
To see how much CPU power the script has consumed, we need to look at the 'user time' and 'system time' values. The seconds and microseconds portions are provided separately by default. You can divide the microseconds value by 1 million, and add it to the seconds value, to get the total seconds as a decimal number.
Let's see an example:
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// sleep for 3 seconds (non-busy)
sleep(3);
$data = getrusage();
echo "User time: ".
($data['ru_utime.tv_sec'] +
$data['ru_utime.tv_usec'] / 1000000);
echo "System time: ".
($data['ru_stime.tv_sec'] +
$data['ru_stime.tv_usec'] / 1000000);
/* prints
User time: 0.011552
System time: 0
*/
Even though the script took about 3 seconds to run, the CPU usage was very very low. Because during the sleep operation, the script actually does not consume CPU resources. There are many other tasks that may take real time, but may not use CPU time, like waiting for disk operations. So as you see, the CPU usage and the actual length of the runtime are not always the same.
