This session will show you how to improve performance of your Drupal web applications. Nowadays, Drupal is running on well-known web servers such as Apache and Nginx. These web servers handle the HTTP protocol and redirect dynamic requests to PHP. Even if you have "opcode cache" enabled, we should run heavy Drupal bootstrap phases for every single request on the dynamic websites. In the end, the bootstrap time of the web application is a major factor that affects response time and overall performance.

PHP was not developed to be a server itself and was not designed to be asynchronous. But ReactPHP can bring the asynchronous programming concepts from node.js to PHP. React is a low-level library for event-driven programming in PHP. At its core is an event loop, on top of which it provides low-level utilities, such as: Streams abstraction, async dns resolver, network client/server, http client/server, interaction with processes. Third-party libraries can use these components to create async network clients/servers and more.

ReactPHP helps us to reduce bootstrap time and significantly improve application performance of the Drupal website. We will show you how to run Drupal website with ReactPHP and analyze advantages/disadvantages of this approach!

About Speakers

Denis Shishkov (vzblk) is a Lead Software Engineer at EPAM Systems. He has over 12 years of experience in software development. He plays different roles in the company and in the projects: architect, team leader, developer, mentor, and consultant. He is an adept of performance optimization and Drupal.

Dmitry Morozov is a Senior Software Engineer and Tech Lead at EPAM Systems, a Research Assistant at Scientific and Technological Park of the BNTU Polytechnic with 6+ years of experience in applications geared towards the media, entertainment and publishing businesses, and production automation. He has completed and participated in many Drupal projects including long-term development of media websites for Blue Chip customers with millions of visitors.