CakePHP Preloader

An OPCache preloader for CakePHP.

Reference: https://www.php.net/manual/en/opcache.preloading.php

This package is meant to provide an easy way for CakePHP application developers to generate preload files. Goals:

• Generate an OPCache preloader with a simple command.
• Allow optionally loading additional resources such as CakePHP plugins, userland app, and composer packages.
• Provide a simplistic API for writing a custom preloader.

For an alternative approach, checkout DarkGhostHunter/Preloader.

For an OPCache UI, checkout amnuts/opcache-gui.

The current release is for CakePHP 5 and PHP 8.1, see previous releases for older versions of CakePHP and PHP.

Version	Branch	Cake Version	PHP Version
1.*	main	^5.0	^8.1
0.*	v0	^4.2	^7.4

Installation

You can install this plugin into your CakePHP application using composer.

The recommended way to install composer packages is:

composer require cnizzardini/cakephp-preloader

Next, load the plugin:

bin/cake plugin load CakePreloader

Or via manual steps in the CakePHP plugin documentation.

Usage

The easiest way to use CakePreloader is via the console command. This command can easily be included as part of your applications build process.

/srv/app $ bin/cake preloader --help
Generate a preload file

Usage:
cake preloader [options]

Options:

--app           Add your applications src directory into the preloader
--help, -h      Display this help.
--name          The preload file path. (default: ROOT . DS . 'preload.php')
--packages      A comma separated list of packages (e.g. vendor-name/package-name) to add to the preloader
--plugins       A comma separated list of your plugins to load or `*` to load all plugins/*
--cli           Should the preloader file exit when run via the php-cli? (default: true)
--quiet, -q     Enable quiet output.
--verbose, -v   Enable verbose output.

You may also load configurations from a config/preloader_config.php file. Please note, command line arguments take precedence. See assets/preloader_config.php for a sample configuration file. If you prefer handling configurations another way read the CakePHP documentation on loading configuration files.

Examples:

Default loads in CakePHP core files excluding TestSuite, Console, Command, and Shell namespaces. The preload file is written to ROOT . DS . 'preload.php':

bin/cake preloader

Include a list of composer packages:

bin/cake preloader --packages=cakephp/authentication,cakephp/chronos

Include your APP code:

bin/cake preloader --app

Include all your projects plugins:

bin/cake preloader --plugins=*

Include a list of your projects plugins:

bin/cake preloader --plugins=MyPlugin,MyOtherPlugin

Before Write Event

You can extend functionality by listening for the CakePreloader.beforeWrite event. This is dispatched just before your preloader file is written.

(\Cake\Event\EventManager::instance())->on('CakePreloader.beforeWrite', function(Event $event){
    /** @var Preloader $preloader */
    $preloader = $event->getSubject();
    $resources = $preloader->getPreloadResources();
    // modify resources or whatever...
    $preloader->setPreloadResources($resources);
});

For more on events, read the CakePHP Events System documentation.

Preloader Class

You can customize your OPCache Preloader using the same class used by the console command. Preloader uses a port of CakePHP 4.x's Filesystem class under the hood.

use CakePreloader\Preloader;

$preloader = new Preloader();
$preloader->loadPath('/required/path/to/files', function (\SplFileInfo $file) {
    // optional call back method, return true to add the file to the preloader
    return true;
});

// default path is ROOT . DS . 'preload.php'
$preloader->write('/optional/path/to/preloader-file.php');

Performance:

Obviously, these types of benchmarks should be taken with a bit of a gain of salt. I benchmarked this using apache bench with this project here: https://github.com/mixerapi/demo which is a dockerized REST API (LEMP stack on alpine + php-fpm 8.0). CakePHP DEBUG was set to false.

extension=intl.so
extension=pdo_mysql.so
extension=sodium
extension=zip.so
zend_extension=opcache.so

[php]
session.auto_start = Off
short_open_tag = Off
opcache.preload_user=root
opcache.preload=/srv/app/preload.php
opcache.interned_strings_buffer = 16
opcache.max_accelerated_files = 20000
opcache.memory_consumption = 256
opcache.enable_cli = 0
opcache.enable = 1
opcache.revalidate_freq = 360
opcache.fast_shutdown = 1
realpath_cache_size = 4096K
realpath_cache_ttl = 600

Note: opcache.preload_user=root and opcache.preload=/srv/app/preload.php were disabled for the no preload run.

Type	JSON View (no db)	JSON View (db select)
OPCache Only	892.69 [#/sec] (mean)	805.29 [#/sec] (mean)
OPCache Preload (default)	1149.08 [#/sec] (mean)	976.30 [#/sec] (mean)

This is 28% more requests per second for JSON responses and 21% more requests per second with JSON + simple SQL select when OPCache Preload is enabled.

Tests / Analysis

Test Suite:

composer test

Test Suite + Static Analysis:

composer check