On Thu, 2010-07-22 at 10:49 +0200, Sebastian Ewert wrote: > Hi, > > I'm developing an joomla component and my helper an user classes are > crowing bigger and bigger. The helper class is for static use only. > > Does class size decrease performance of my php scripts, even for static > usage? > Is there a general rule when to split a class to keep performance up? > > Thanks for reply, > Sebastian > > How big roughly are we talking here? The larger a script or class is, the more memory this uses per instance. Out of the box, PHP doesn't have a way to share the memory space of libraries and classes, so creating massive scripts for a website is not a great idea. The typical approach is to break classes down into blocks such that you need only include per script what you actually need to run that script. For example, having a full class dedicated to user management would need somewhere to create a list of users. Now it doesn't make sense to include this user management class each time you want to create a list of users, so you could split that method off into a different class where it can easily be shared without every script loading in lots of unnecessary code. That's a very simple example, but it can help beforehand if you sketch out exactly what you need to do, and then break it down into logical classes like that. Maybe look at some UML software to help you with this? Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
