Best way to retrieve multiple fields from another page?

[Gabi]

Good day, gentlemen,

I apologize if the answer to my question exists already, I just couldn't find it.

I'm working to have a group of global data such as tagline and contact info. I defined a hidden page ("sys") to store in its fields all the required data. Then the template (actually a prepended script) retrieves and attaches them to $page, like this:

$sys = wire('pages')->get(1222);

$page->tagline = $sys->headline;
$page->contact_name = $sys->contact_name;
$page->company_name = $sys->company_name;
$page->company_address = $sys->company_address;
$page->city = $sys->city;
$page->country = $sys->country;
$page->tel = $sys->tel;
$page->email = $sys->email;
$page->tel = $sys->tel;

However, I was surprized to see that using the "$page->get('selector')" is 3 times faster than "$page->selector" (even if we're talking about 30msec vs 90msec on localhost):

$sys = wire('pages')->get(1222);

$page->tagline = $sys->get('headline');
$page->contact_name = $sys->get('contact_name');
$page->company_name = $sys->get('company_name');
$page->company_address = $sys->get('company_address');
$page->city = $sys->get('city');
$page->country = $sys->get('country');
$page->tel = $sys->get('tel');
$page->email = $sys->get('email');
$page->tel = $sys->get('tel');
 

Wrong conclusion. I think I just witnessed the cache at work. They actually have the same speed.

I also thought of hard-coding them in /site/config.php. I know, not very clean and requires further work for multilingual data, but it seems it will be faster.

Another one would be a custom query to select all the data in one pass.

Which way would be the cleaner/faster/powerwirish one?

Thank you.

[Wanze]

Hi Gabi,

There's no difference between calling ->field or ->get('field');

First is routed through PHPs magic getter ( __get() ) and will call the get() method behind the scenes...

If you want to have global variables available all the time, why not just store them in a variable, e.g. $global?

No need to assign them to the actual $page variable:

// Store page in $global or $sys
$global = wire('pages')->get(1222);

// Later in any template... just get the values from your variable
echo "<div id='contact'>{$global->contact_name}</div>";

[Gabi]

Hi Wanze,

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question.

Actually I knew about __get(), but my brain liked to believe half-baked measurements. I left the mistake in place, maybe it will be of some use for someone. 

I attached the variables to $page because at some point I used functions outside the template scope (I think) and I passed $page along with all variables to the said functions. But now I'm not using them anymore, so you're right, I don't need to assign them to $page.

I made some experiments and found that retrieving the variables directly from the database is only around 60 msec faster than your method on XAMPP for a page using the variables both in the header and in the footer. Your method is much more maintainable, so it stays.

All the best.