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.

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Table of Contents

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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