php page load time

[blakesmoore]

Hey,

 

I need to generate a script which tells me how long it takes for an external page to load...

 

Please can you help?

 

Thanks

[ManiacDan]

An external page?

$start = microtime(true);
file_get_contents('http://www.yourURL.com/page.html');
echo "Page loaded in: " . number_format(microtime(true)-$start,2) . " seconds.<br />";

[blakesmoore]

Thanks for this Dan,

 

will this tell me how long it takes to load any site that i replace 'http://www.yourURL.com/page.html' with?

[NLT]

Thanks for this Dan,

 

will this tell me how long it takes to load any site that i replace 'http://www.yourURL.com/page.html' with?

 

Yes, it should do.

 

You could even add a function you could use with a form rather than editing the PHP file all the time.

<?PHP
function websitetime($website)
{
$start = microtime(true);
file_get_contents($website);
echo "Page loaded in: ". number_format(microtime(true)-$start,2) . " seconds.<br />";
}

if(isset($_POST['submit']) && $_POST['website'])
{
$website = $_POST['website'];
websitetime($website);
}
?>

<form method="post">
Website: <input type="text" name="website" /> <br />
<input type="submit" value="Submit" name="submit" />
</form>

 

Should work, I haven't tested it though.

[blakesmoore]

Yeah I already incorperated the form

 

Although, im not sure if it is giving accurate results for loading times?

 

tools.pingdom.com is giving a totally different result?

[ManiacDan]

the pingdom test also fetches external javascript and images.  If you want to find the complete load time of a site and all its assets, it will be a significantly longer script.  Many sites these days also draw a portion of their interface in javascript, which is even more difficult to time properly.

[blakesmoore]

So what is this script measuring?

[ManiacDan]

The 3 line thing I gave you checks exactly what was asked for: The "load time" of an external script.  It measures the amount of time it takes for the script to execute and finish giving output.

 

The pingdom test does that, and then parses the output to see if it's HTML.  If it is, it fetches images, javascript, and CSS as well, probably in parallel.