Homepage: Improve front page performance by avoiding extra queries

Read blog posts from cached JSON and the latest builds directly
from BDB. Guesstimate a good number of posts to show by looking
at the content length.

Only open one database connection per request.

web/classes/frontcontroller.class.php

@@ -42,6 +42,7 @@ class FrontController
     private $_plugins;
     private $_actions;
     private $_contentCache = NULL;
+    private $_db = NULL;
 
     private $_visibleErrors = false;
 
@@ -105,6 +106,10 @@ private function __construct($config)
         ini_set('display_errors', (bool) $this->_visibleErrors);
         ini_set('display_startup_errors', (bool) $this->_visibleErrors);
         set_error_handler(array(&$this,"ErrorHandler"));
+
+        // Open a database connection.
+        require_once(DENG_API_DIR.'/include/database.inc.php');        
+        $this->_db = db_open();
 
         // Locate plugins.
         $this->_plugins = new Plugins(DIR_PLUGINS);
@@ -140,6 +145,11 @@ public function &request()
     {
         return $this->_request;
     }
+
+    public function &database()
+    {
+        return $this->_db;
+    }
 
     public function &plugins()
     {

web/plugins/pages/pages.php

@@ -122,7 +122,7 @@ function generate_download_badge($db, $file_id)
 function generate_badges($platform, $type)
 {
     // Find the latest suitable files.
-    $db = db_open();
+    $db = FrontController::fc()->database();
     $result = db_latest_files($db, $platform, $type);
     $latest_build = 0;
     while ($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {        
@@ -135,7 +135,6 @@ function generate_badges($platform, $type)
         }
         generate_download_badge($db, $row['id']);
     }
-    $db->close();
 }
 
 class PagesPlugin extends Plugin implements Actioner, RequestInterpreter