Repeater field limits and server timeouts

[John W.]

I used a repeater field on my site to handle arrest reports. (It's much easier for the user than say adding a new entry for each person arrested as you would a new page). Basically, my client creates a new entry with the arrest report section then starts adding repeater "records" and data which include:

name

dob

offense

mugshot

... repeat the above for each offender

This is a small county newspaper and we rarely have over 100 arrests listed per report.

I noticed when about 60 repeaters are added after that I get a server timeout when trying to edit the page. I bumped up max_execution_time to 90 seconds and I get a 500 error. When I set max_execution_time to 60 seconds it loads -- but that is really pushing it. It was my belief that the Repeater field type could handle lots of repeaters, with the exception of getting into say a thousand or more, but 60-70? 

This may take care of it for this project, but, I'm thinking about future projects.

I noticed that ProFields has a Table field type and watched the video, however, I didn't see any option of adding an image field in there. Is that possible?  This would allow for fast entry of data with the addition of an image for each record.

Any other suggestions are appreciated.

thanks.

[nghi]

I had this happen to me where a client used the repeater field out of it's planned scoped. (It was only suppose to have only 4 but it now has like 60 and the back end takes very long to load or eventually times out)

You'll probably need to rebuild your records as a custom template page instead of using a repeater. You can write a script to move your data from the repeater field into your new custom template page.

[LostKobrakai]

For that number of data nodes I'd suggest using neither repeaters nor ProFields Table but a PageTable.

Even for a small repeated fieldset of 3 fields this would result in 180 to 240 Inputfields just for the repeater. This can really draw browser rendering performance even if the server does respond correctly. If the number of repeater fields would be near 12-15 you're also close to hitting max_input_vars limits. With PageTables both issues do not apply.