Topic: Embedhtml using a large amount of memory

Posted by surveygizmo · 07-08-2012 - 20:20

Hi,
We use phpdocx to automatically generate word documents for our customers based on their reports.

The problem is embedHTML is using up a large amount of memory in php (~500mb) to generate a word document that only ends up being about 80k.

While we are able to create this word document, for anything larger we hit the server's memory limit. I was wondering if there was someway to stream the document out to a file during embedHTML or if there was some way to limit the memory usage.

Here's our code below along with memory usage dumps:
[code] var_dump(6,memory_get_usage());

$this->endSession();//close the document div
$outputCode = '';
$outputCode .= $this->getBody();//get the html
unset($this->documentBuffer);

var_dump(7,memory_get_usage());

$file = $saveInPath.$fileName;
$docx = new CreateDocx();

var_dump(8,memory_get_usage());

$docx->embedHTML($outputCode, array('parseDivsAsPs' => false, 'downloadImages' => true, 'id' => 'bodyContent'));
unset($outputCode);

var_dump(9,memory_get_usage());

$docx->createDocx($file);

var_dump(10,memory_get_usage());[/code]

And here's the output:
int(6)
int(54476040)
int(7)
int(54476136)
int(8)
int(56217040)
int(9)
int(498491816)
int(10)
int(503589144)

You'll notice how the memory jumps up from 56mb to 498mb between #8 and #9.

Here's a link to the test doc file that was outputted:
[url]http://surveygizmolibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/library/6175/testdoc.docx[/url]

Thanks!
-Chad

Posted by truth@proposaltech.com · 18-12-2013 - 22:43

We had the same problem and after many hours of trial and error, I've cut the peak memory usage of phpdocx in half while generating the exact same output. I generated the same 460kb docx file three times with the following peak memory usages:

1355mb: 3.6 as downloaded from phpdocx.com

1072mb: Replacing accessing the font properties using the magic __get function with a normal function

631mb: Also clearing the font properties when no longer needed.

I tried other methods of reducing memory usage, but the other methods only saved ~1% of the memory consumption and required far more changes to the code. (For example, I swapped out some array usage for splfixedarray usage.) The changes I made to achieve the memory reduction can be easily applied by following the notes below. I hope the phpdocx team incorporates this in their next release (so everyone can save on memory consumption and so I don't have to patch my upgrade ;) ).

Add the following to lib/dompdfParser/include/frameparser.cls.php (e.g. near "function set_style")

// This representation of a DOM element will likely be part of a tree

// and will continue to be stored after processing this subtree has

// completed. The style information consumes a large amount of memory

// and may be cleared when no longer needed.

function clear_style() {

$this->_style = null;

}

In lib/dompdfParser/include/parserhtml.cls.php

Before each "return" in _render(), add:

// Frame processing has completed. Free memory.

$frame->clear_style();

Replace

try{$sTemp = $properties->$style;}

with

try{$sTemp = $properties->nonmagic_get($style);}

In lib/dompdfParser/include/styleparser.cls.php

Replace

function __get($prop) {

with

function __get($prop) {

return $this->nonmagic_get($prop);

}

// The magic of __get leaks memory. Calling a normal function avoids the leak.

function nonmagic_get($prop) {

Posted by jorgelj · 19-12-2013 - 09:17

Hello,

Thanks for you code, we're going to test it.

Regards.

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