Laravel Chunk vs. Cursor

I’ve been fighting memory limits more often than I thought I would have to. Giving me the thought that perhaps I’m building my query wrong. But there are a few helpful helpers that can keep the memory low. Two of them being chunk() and cursor().

This speed test is brought to you by @ryo511. His explantation is neat and easy to digest.

TL; DR

• cursor (): High Speed
• chunk (): Constant Memory Usage

10,000 records

	Time (sec)	Memory (MB)
get ()	0.17	twenty two
chunk (100)	0.38	Ten
chunk (1000)	0.17	12
cursor ()	0.16	14

100,000 records

	Time (sec)	Memory (MB)
get ()	0.8	132
chunk (100)	19.9	Ten
chunk (1000)	2.3	12
chunk (10000)	1.1	34
cursor ()	0.5	45

What is Chunk and Cursor?

For a quick overview of chunk() and cursor() @JeanMarcos has a simplified answer.

Chunk: It will “paginate” your query, this way you use less memory.

• Uses less memory
• It takes longer

public function getData() {
    Contact::chunk(1000, function ($contacts) {
        foreach ($contacts as $contact) {
            //rest of your code...
        }
    });
}

Cursor: You will use PHP Generators to search your query items one by one.

• It takes less time
• Uses more memory

public function getData() {
    foreach (Contact::cursor() as $contact) {
        //rest of your code...
    }
}