BenchPress

BenchPress is a WordPress® plugin for benchmarking PHP code snippets, WordPress® queries, and other critical operations.

It's designed to help developers evaluate and optimize code performance by running benchmarks and capturing snapshots for later comparison.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Setup
• Usage
• Available Benchmarks
• Customizing Benchmarks
• Snapshots
• Plugin Settings
• Contributing
• License
• • *

Installation

1. Download the plugin ZIP from the GitHub repository.
2. Upload it via WordPress® Admin:
   • Go to Plugins > Add New.
   • Click Upload Plugin, select the downloaded ZIP, and click Install Now.
3. Activate the plugin via the Plugins page in the WordPress® Admin.

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Setup

BenchPress automatically creates a custom database table to store snapshots of benchmark results on activation. The plugin also includes settings to customize benchmark runs. To configure these:

1. Go to BenchPress > Settings in your WordPress® admin sidebar.
2. Adjust loop counts, post IDs, and other options to customize how each benchmark runs.

Usage

Once installed and configured, you can run benchmarks, view results, and save snapshots for later reference:

1. Running Benchmarks:

   • Navigate to BenchPress in your WordPress® admin menu.
   • Click Refresh Tests to run all enabled benchmarks and view results.

2. Saving Snapshots:

   • On the main BenchPress page, click Save Snapshot to save a record of the current benchmark results.

3. Viewing Snapshots:

   • Go to BenchPress > Snapshots to view all saved snapshots. Each snapshot can be viewed, downloaded, or deleted.
   • • *

Available Benchmarks

BenchPress comes with several built-in benchmarks. Here's a quick overview:

• Switch vs. Match: Compares the performance of PHP switch vs match statements.
• Transient vs. Direct Query: Tests the speed of transient caching against direct database queries.
• Post Meta Access: Compares get_post_meta() with WP_Meta_Query for retrieving post meta data.
• WP_Query by ID: Measures query performance for retrieving single or multiple posts.
• Array Merge vs. Union: Compares array_merge with the array union (+) operator.
• String Concatenation: Benchmarks PHP's . operator vs sprintf.
• • *

Customizing Benchmarks

Adding Custom Benchmarks

BenchPress includes a benchpress_run_all_benchmarks filter to allow you to add custom benchmarks. Here's an example of how to add your own benchmark:

add_filter( 'benchpress_run_all_benchmarks', function( $benchmarks ) {
    // Define your custom benchmark
    $benchmarks[] = custom_benchmark_example();
    return $benchmarks;
});

// Custom benchmark function
function custom_benchmark_example() {
    $loop_count = get_option( 'custom_benchmark_loop_count', 100000 );
    $start_time = microtime( true );

    for ( $i = 0; $i < $loop_count; $i++ ) {
        $result = $i * 2; // Example operation
    }

    $execution_time = microtime( true ) - $start_time;

    return [
        'name'          => esc_html__( 'Custom Benchmark', 'benchpress' ),
        'execution_time'=> round( $execution_time, 5 ),
        'description'   => sprintf( esc_html__( 'Executed a loop of %d iterations.', 'benchpress' ), $loop_count ),
    ];
}

Removing Benchmarks

If you want to remove a specific benchmark, you can use the same benchpress_run_all_benchmarks filter. For example, to remove the "Switch vs Match" benchmark:

add_filter( 'benchpress_run_all_benchmarks', function( $benchmarks ) {
    return array_filter( $benchmarks, function( $benchmark ) {
        return $benchmark['name'] !== esc_html__( 'Switch vs Match', 'benchpress' );
    });
});

Accessing Benchmark Data

To access saved snapshots for analysis or custom display, use the custom database table created by BenchPress, which stores each snapshot as JSON data.

Snapshots

Snapshots are records of benchmark results that you can refer back to later. Snapshots can be managed in the BenchPress > Snapshots page:

• Clear Snapshots: Clears all stored snapshots.
• Download Snapshots: Downloads all snapshots as a CSV file.
• • *

Plugin Settings

To configure BenchPress benchmarks, navigate to BenchPress > Settings. Options include:

• Loop Count for Benchmarks: Set the number of iterations for each benchmark.
• Enable Benchmarks: Select which benchmarks to run.
• WP_Query Settings: Configure WP_Query options, including post types, IDs, taxonomy terms, etc.
• • *

Contributing

BenchPress is an open-source project, and contributions are welcome!

To contribute:

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a new branch for your feature or fix.
3. Submit a pull request with a clear description of your changes.

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