Track Execution Time in PHP

Performing benchmark testing in PHP by tracking the execution time of pieces of code.

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By. Jacob

Edited: 2021-04-27 17:58

To track the execution time of a PHP script—or just a part of some PHP code—we should make a timestamp right before executing the relevant code, and then again right after the code finishes.

This is quite useful for performing simple benchmark testing of code. Often we will find that there is multiple ways to do the same thing when programming, and this is also true when we are coding in PHP. Some PHP functions are simply faster than others.

For the most part, the speed difference is not going to matter unless you are handling several thousands—or even millions—of requests. But, if we know something is faster, then why not use the most efficient method from the beginning? Very often, it is actually obvious what will be the fastest way.

A simple speed test can be performed like this:

$start_time = microtime(true);

// Your code here

$time_spent = microtime(true)-$start_time;

echo $time_spent;

When the parameter of microtime is set to true, the result will be returned in seconds. If you leave out the parameter, a string will be returned instead of a float, which can not be used easily in calculations; hence why microtime(true) is used instead of clean microtime().

$start_time = microtime(true);

for ($i = 0; $x <= 1000000; $i++) {
  // Your code here
}

$time_spent = microtime(true)-$start_time;

echo $time_spent;

time php name_of_script.php

real    0m0.418s
user    0m0.104s
sys     0m0.314s