MySQL optimizer hints for Doctrine

This library provides a simple way to incorporate MySQL's optimizer hints into SELECT queries written in Doctrine Query Language via custom SqlWalker. No need for native queries anymore.

Installation:

composer require shipmonk/doctrine-mysql-optimizer-hints

Example usage:

$result = $em->createQueryBuilder()
    ->select('u.id')
    ->from(User::class, 'u')
    ->andWhere('u.id = 1')
    ->getQuery()
    ->setHint(Query::HINT_CUSTOM_OUTPUT_WALKER, HintDrivenSqlWalker::class)
    ->setHint(OptimizerHintsHintHandler::class, ['SET_VAR(sql_mode=ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY)'])
    ->getResult();

Which produces following SQL:

SELECT /*+ SET_VAR(sql_mode=ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY) */ u0_.id AS id_0
FROM user u0_
WHERE u0_.id = 1

Be careful what you place as optimizer hint, you are basically writing SQL there, but MySQL produces only warnings when a typo is made there.

Use cases:

Limiting / extending max execution time for a single query:

Any reasonable application uses some global max_execution_time to avoid queries running for hours. But you may want to break this limitation for a single long-running query. Doing so by SET max_execution_time = 10000; is tricky as you should revert that to previous value just after the query ends. This results in complex code around it, optimizer hint does that for you for free:

->setHint(Query::HINT_CUSTOM_OUTPUT_WALKER, HintDrivenSqlWalker::class)
->setHint(OptimizerHintsHintHandler::class, ['MAX_EXECUTION_TIME(1000)'])

Query optimization:

Sometimes, forcing some index usage is not enough and you need to help MySQL optimizer to adjust the order of tables in execution plan. Join-order optimizer hints are the way to go. Simpliest usage is to force the table order to be exactly as you wrote it is using JOIN_FIXED_ORDER():

->setHint(Query::HINT_CUSTOM_OUTPUT_WALKER, HintDrivenSqlWalker::class)
->setHint(OptimizerHintsHintHandler::class, ['JOIN_FIXED_ORDER()'])

Testing invisible index:

When dealing with complex query optimization on production, you can only guess if the new index you thought up will help or not. Since MySQL 8.0, you can create invisible index (those are maintained by the engine, but not used). But you can enable invisible indexes for the query you want to test:

->setHint(Query::HINT_CUSTOM_OUTPUT_WALKER, HintDrivenSqlWalker::class)
->setHint(OptimizerHintsHintHandler::class, ["SET_VAR(optimizer_switch = 'use_invisible_indexes=on')"])

Enlarging group_concat limit for a single query

Default limit of group_concat_max_len is 1024, but you can make it bigger:

->setHint(Query::HINT_CUSTOM_OUTPUT_WALKER, HintDrivenSqlWalker::class)
->setHint(OptimizerHintsHintHandler::class, ["SET_VAR(group_concat_max_len = 4294967295)"])

Combining with index hints:

Since 2.0.0, you can combine this library with shipmonk/doctrine-mysql-index-hint:

$result = $em->createQueryBuilder()
    ->select('u.id')
    ->from(User::class, 'u')
    ->andWhere('u.id = 1')
    ->getQuery()
    ->setHint(Query::HINT_CUSTOM_OUTPUT_WALKER, HintDrivenSqlWalker::class)
    ->setHint(OptimizerHintsHintHandler::class, ['MAX_EXECUTION_TIME(1000)'])
    ->setHint(UseIndexHintHandler::class, [IndexHint::force(User::IDX_FOO, User::TABLE_NAME)])
    ->getResult();