Simplest way to profile a PHP script

You want xdebug I think. Install it on the server, turn it on, pump the output through kcachegrind (for linux) or wincachegrind (for windows) and it'll show you a few pretty charts that detail the exact timings, counts and memory usage (but you'll need another extension for that).

It rocks, seriously :D

The PECL APD extension is used as follows:

<?php
apd_set_pprof_trace();

//rest of the script
?>

After, parse the generated file using pprofp.

Example output:

Trace for /home/dan/testapd.php
Total Elapsed Time = 0.00
Total System Time  = 0.00
Total User Time    = 0.00


Real         User        System             secs/    cumm
%Time (excl/cumm)  (excl/cumm)  (excl/cumm) Calls    call    s/call  Memory Usage Name
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
100.0 0.00 0.00  0.00 0.00  0.00 0.00     1  0.0000   0.0009            0 main
56.9 0.00 0.00  0.00 0.00  0.00 0.00     1  0.0005   0.0005            0 apd_set_pprof_trace
28.0 0.00 0.00  0.00 0.00  0.00 0.00    10  0.0000   0.0000            0 preg_replace
14.3 0.00 0.00  0.00 0.00  0.00 0.00    10  0.0000   0.0000            0 str_replace

Warning: the latest release of APD is dated 2004, the extension is no longer maintained and has various compability issues (see comments).

No extensions are needed, just use these two functions for simple profiling.

// Call this at each point of interest, passing a descriptive string
function prof_flag($str)
{
    global $prof_timing, $prof_names;
    $prof_timing[] = microtime(true);
    $prof_names[] = $str;
}

// Call this when you're done and want to see the results
function prof_print()
{
    global $prof_timing, $prof_names;
    $size = count($prof_timing);
    for($i=0;$i<$size - 1; $i++)
    {
        echo "<b>{$prof_names[$i]}</b><br>";
        echo sprintf("&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;%f<br>", $prof_timing[$i+1]-$prof_timing[$i]);
    }
    echo "<b>{$prof_names[$size-1]}</b><br>";
}

Here is an example, calling prof_flag() with a description at each checkpoint, and prof_print() at the end:

prof_flag("Start");

   include '../lib/database.php';
   include '../lib/helper_func.php';

prof_flag("Connect to DB");

   connect_to_db();

prof_flag("Perform query");

   // Get all the data

   $select_query = "SELECT * FROM data_table";
   $result = mysql_query($select_query);

prof_flag("Retrieve data");

   $rows = array();
   $found_data=false;
   while($r = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
   {
       $found_data=true;
       $rows[] = $r;
   }

prof_flag("Close DB");

   mysql_close();   //close database connection

prof_flag("Done");
prof_print();

Output looks like this:

Start
   0.004303
Connect to DB
   0.003518
Perform query
   0.000308
Retrieve data
   0.000009
Close DB
   0.000049
Done