Limits to TablePress?

Hi,

thanks for your question.

I can’t give guarantees, obviously, but with the new data format and storage location that TablePress uses (“Custom Post Types” in WordPress), I don’t think that the number of tables will result in performance problems. After all, each table is – very similar to a post or page – just an entry in the “wp_posts” table. And there are WordPress sites with thousands of posts and pages, so I don’t think that this will be an issue here.
At some point, the “All Tables” screen might be slow in loading, but I don’t have enough experience from feedback (or “measurement data”) to give details or approximations here.

Regards,
Tobias

Hi Tobias,

Thanks for your earlier response.

Is there any limit to file size. I have been trying to upload a CSV delimited (from Excel) file (size 234kb) with 8 columns and 3300 rows, and it does not save (the page becomes unresponsive, with the option given to kill pages or wait), and then when I click on what appears it saved, it does not open it.

Thanks,

Ganaxi

Hi,

the limit here is not really the file size, but the browser memory. See, 8 columns and 3300 rows mean that there at least 8*3300=26400 text input fields on the page. Unless a computer is really fast and has a lot of memory, this is simply going to overstrain the browser, as you experienced.
So, importing this is possible, but editing the table in TablePress is not really a good idea. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good solution to this, sorry ??

Regards,
Tobias

Addendum to above Question: It does save, but even on a 30 Mbps connection, it takes many minutes.

Hi,

yes, as mentioned it’s more the browser, the memory, and the processing time of the input field. The time to transmit the data (and thus the connection speed) are not relevant here.
It’s just slow for the browser to manage and walk through all the input fields, collect their content, throw it all together in a “package” and then finally send that off.

Regards,
Tobias

Hi Tobias,

I figured how to do this in TablePress (I had one even larger table, that just crashed the browser everytime).

I hid the Table Content tab while uploading and saving a smaller table. Then, when I uploaded the subject table, since the Table Content tab was collapsed, the browser did not have to render the data, and that narrowed down the upload time to a few seconds for even the largest tables.

A problem I am continuing to have with some of the larger Tables, is that after it saves, if I change the ID# to fit my custom nomenclature, it refuses to change it — no matter how many times I try (it reverts back to the original ID#). I am hoping that this is something that you have a fix for.

Thanks again,

Ganaxi

Hi,

that sounds like a good workaround, indeed.

I’m not really sure about that ID-changing issue. Are you seeing the confirmation message about having to change all Shortcodes?
A work around for this might be to create a new table, change the ID to what you want, and then import your (large) data set, choosing to replace the existing table (which already has the desired ID).

Regards,
Tobias

Hi,

The ID-changing issue happens only for the large tables (more than, say, 1000 rows, and 8 columns). Thanks for the workaround, about creating a new table… I will try that. If you come up with a more elegant solution, though, please post it.

Hi,

I don’t see how this could only affect large tables, but probably it also is related to the JavaScript being executed only very slowly.

Of course, if I find something, I’ll keep you posted with updates!

Best wishes,
Tobias

Hi,

FYI – Found a better workaround. Quirky, but it works.

If you click on the Table Name field after entering the new (alternate) ID, for some reason, it saves the new ID (does not revert back to the old one). And it does that every time.

Thanks,

Ganaxi

Hi,

ah, so before, you were changing the ID and directly clicking “Save changes”? That won’t work indeed, you’ll have to click somewhere else first.
I’m trying to find a better way for this though, which will then be part of the next TablePress version.

Regards,
Tobias

Hi, Tobias:

Now I am getting the following error when I try to import more Tables.

=======
Server error

The website encountered an error while retrieving https://www.gurufundpicks.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=tablepress_import. It may be down for maintenance or configured incorrectly.
Here are some suggestions:
Reload this webpage later.
HTTP Error 500 (Internal Server Error): An unexpected condition was encountered while the server was attempting to fulfill the request.
======

Can you tell if this is this a TablePress issue, or something that my host should have to fix.

Thanks,

Ganaxi

Hi,

unfortunately, I don’t know why this happens. It might be a result of the processing that takes too long.
You should try to get more details about the error from the server error log. Either you can access this yourself, or you’ll have to ask your host for it.

Regards,
Tobias

Hi Tobias,

Just got feedback from my hosting provider. They helped me fix the problem temporarily, but below is their feedback to help you further enhance the plugin.

Basically, I understood that the problem maybe that the plugin loads all of the tables into memory on the back-end, as opposed to loading just one table or just the names, so when there are a lot of tables (in my case, over 500 ranging in size 3kb to 300kb each, the resulting file is too large for the server memory even when set to 0.25GB, which I understood is very large for just one plugin.

=======
For the developer of the Tables plugin, please let him know that the $table variable in model-table.php is using json_decode (line 151), which, for having a lot of tables, will exhaust the memory limit on the server as the number of tables increases. Additionally, the “View Tables” tab (default) of the plugin should probably only list the names of the tables, not the data, making this json_decode call unnecessary.
=======

The temporary fix they have given me includes commenting out line 151 while importing, and then reverting back to the old model-table.php file, after import is complete.

Thanks,

Ganaxi

Hi Tobias,

the workaround mentioned above did not work. So basically, I am in a bind now, as I would like to continue using the plugin, but I have a website to deploy, and I can’t do it using the plugin until I can add more tables. Please help.

Thanks,

Ganaxi