reflection: Use fast ZPP for ReflectionProperty::(get|set)Value()

[TimWolla]

During the Doctrine Core Team Meetup 2024 the Doctrine team investigated the performance overhead of using setRawValueWithoutLazyInitialization() instead of setValue() and came to the surprising conclusion that setRawValueWithoutLazyInitialization() outperformed setValue(), despite doing more work.

These two scripts are used as the benchmark:

<?php
class Foo
{
public $id;
public $foo1;
public $foo2;
public $foo3;
public $foo4;
}
$reflection = new ReflectionClass(Foo::class);
$properties = $reflection->getProperties();
for ($i = 0; $i < 1000000; $i++) {
$foo = new Foo();
foreach ($properties as $property) {
$property->setValue($foo, 1);
}
}

and

<?php
class Foo
{
public $id;
public $foo1;
public $foo2;
public $foo3;
public $foo4;
}
$reflection = new ReflectionClass(Foo::class);
$properties = $reflection->getProperties();
for ($i = 0; $i < 1000000; $i++) {
$foo = new Foo();
foreach ($properties as $property) {
$property->setRawValueWithoutLazyInitialization($foo, 1);
}
}

Benchmarking these with a current git master shows that setValue() is 50% slower:

$ hyperfine -L script setValue,setRawValueWithoutLazyInitialization '/tmp/php-before /tmp/test/{script}.php'
Benchmark 1: /tmp/php-before /tmp/test/setValue.php
Time (mean ± σ): 216.0 ms ± 5.8 ms [User: 212.0 ms, System: 3.7 ms]
Range (min … max): 208.2 ms … 225.3 ms 13 runs
Benchmark 2: /tmp/php-before /tmp/test/setRawValueWithoutLazyInitialization.php
Time (mean ± σ): 145.6 ms ± 3.6 ms [User: 141.6 ms, System: 3.8 ms]
Range (min … max): 140.4 ms … 152.8 ms 20 runs
Summary
/tmp/php-before /tmp/test/setRawValueWithoutLazyInitialization.php ran
1.48 ± 0.05 times faster than /tmp/php-before /tmp/test/setValue.php

Looking into the “why” revealed that the setValue() script spent quite some time in zend_parse_parameters().

A 50% overhead can be significant, given that setValue() is commonly called several thousand times in a single request when using Doctrine.

This commit changes the non-static property case of setValue() to make use of the fast parameter parsing API and adjusts getValue() for consistency.

The resulting comparison shows that both setValue() and setRawValueWithoutLazyInitialization() are now (almost) equal:

$ hyperfine -L script setValue,setRawValueWithoutLazyInitialization 'sapi/cli/php /tmp/test/{script}.php'
Benchmark 1: sapi/cli/php /tmp/test/setValue.php
Time (mean ± σ): 143.0 ms ± 6.4 ms [User: 139.4 ms, System: 3.4 ms]
Range (min … max): 134.8 ms … 157.7 ms 18 runs
Benchmark 2: sapi/cli/php /tmp/test/setRawValueWithoutLazyInitialization.php
Time (mean ± σ): 147.0 ms ± 5.5 ms [User: 143.0 ms, System: 3.6 ms]
Range (min … max): 139.9 ms … 159.8 ms 19 runs
Summary
sapi/cli/php /tmp/test/setValue.php ran
1.03 ± 0.06 times faster than sapi/cli/php /tmp/test/setRawValueWithoutLazyInitialization.php

[ndossche]

Otherwise LGTM.