Pear's ITX and Smarty are two commonly used PHP template plugins. Here, I conducted a simple runtime performance evaluation and comparison, sharing my personal experience.
The runtime for template output is measured in milliseconds.
| ITX | Smarty |
|---|---|
| 105 | 254 |
| 95 | 87 |
| 94 | 79 |
| 84 | 80 |
| 86 | 80 |
| 84 | 80 |
| 84 | 83 |
| 84 | 82 |
| 86 | 80 |
| 84 | 80 |
Evaluation
ITX seems to have a simple caching mechanism, while Smarty uses compilation. Both are slow during the first run but perform very stably afterward. Smarty's compilation slightly outperforms ITX's caching, but Smarty's advantage is not as significant as expected. ITX templates completely avoid process and modular parsing, making development significantly easier compared to Smarty. Sometimes, I feel that creating complex nested loop templates in Smarty is more cumbersome than developing the corresponding program logic. ITX's lack of support for nested templates can be balanced by its simplified development advantages.
Conclusion
Considering ITX's simplified development, its slight performance disadvantage is acceptable. I choose ITX. In summary, both have their pros and cons, supporting different functionalities. The choice ultimately depends on individual preferences and specific use cases.
Original Chinese article link: https://www.snowpeak.fun/cn/article/detail/pear_itx_vs_smarty_a_small_performance_test_on_two_common_template_system/