Using output filters and modifiers too much?

I would advise anyone using conditional architecture to read this:

http://modx.com/blog/2012/09/14/tags-as-the-result-or-how-conditionals-are-like-mosquitoes/

I'm not sure that this method has made it to the official documentation.

Like others, we found a site we developed to be very slow using output modifiers and the If snippet (though we couldn't point to one or the other being the main culprit.

Once we used this new method, the site sped up significantly. There were a couple of scenarios where it didn't work and we had to use the If snippet, so both methods are very useful.

That article is a great resource.

The output modifiers are there as a convenience for people who are not comfortable with PHP. There are cases where the speed difference between them and a custom snippet is negligible, but there are other cases where the difference is massive.

The problem is that all the output modifiers are handled by the same large piece of code. MODX has to parse the tag to figure out which modifiers to apply and then parse them further to analyze the conditions (and maybe pass the results on to another modifier, which also has to be parsed).

A dedicated snippet knows what it's getting ahead of time, makes a quick decision, and returns the result. For example, this one-line snippet will show a chunk to logged-in users and nothing to everyone else:



This is almost certain to be faster than the 649 lines of the modOutputModifier class.


The If snippet, is an intermediate option -- usually faster than an output modifier (sometimes a lot faster), but slightly slower than a custom snippet because it has to parse the tag to see what logical test it needs to perform.

Since bounce rate effects can be measured in milliseconds, I always use a custom snippet, even in cases where it's probably not necessary. Bob's Guides doesn't use a single output modifier and the If snippet isn't even installed there (though it's an excellent choice if you're not up to creating a custom snippet).

Originally PHx was intended for working with placeholders used in the mini-templates of Ditto, Jot and similar snippets, where embedding snippets was not always practical or even possible. To be honest, I have never approved of its use beyond that. I fail to see how it is any easier to learn its syntax than it is to learn the simple PHP that is needed for such snippets as the one BobRay illustrates above. But then I learned to program by writing assembly language utilities using EDLIN, so I'm probably a poor judge of such matters.

;) Now that you've said that, let me rewrite the snippet to make it a little easier to follow. It doesn't have to be that cryptic.

This Snippet tag goes in the page content or in the Template:


This is the code of the ShowLoggedInChunk snippet:
[ed. note: BobRay last edited this post 11 years, 3 months ago.]

Hello i am newper in MODx .. i want to show the latest first three news and testimonials at right side of my website.. so can some one tell me how can i manage this part form front-nd to back-nd..?

And also plz tell me how can i manage that with "getResources" ..? i already have installed the pack of "getResources"..

I means to say from the back-nd ..? how can i enter the news details ..? like headning,sub-heading,posted date etc etc ..? and how can i get those first three latest details in front-nd ..??

Thanx

@chirag_wgsol - I think that the first step would be to check the documentation. If that doesn't get you there, then there are quite a few tutorials for using getResources out there.

http://rtfm.modx.com/display/ADDON/getResources

Tutorials such as this one http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Creating+a+Blog+in+MODx+Revolution

@BobRay Thanks for posting. Guess I need to brush up on my php skills and stop relying on tags to do the hard work for me.

I didn't mean to sound quite so stringent on the topic. If the page-load times are acceptable, there's nothing inherently wrong with using output modifiers, and the If snippet is almost always fine since the speed difference between If and a dedicated snippet is negligible.

I didn't mean to sound quite so stringent on the topic. If the page-load times are acceptable, there's nothing inherently wrong with using output modifiers, and the If snippet is almost always fine since the speed difference between If and a dedicated snippet is negligible.