Forum Discussion

Jeremy M.10's avatar
Jeremy M.10
Helpful | Level 6
2 years ago

Moving files via the web interface is glacially slow - how to fix?

Hi: I'm trying to use the web interface to move pictures out of the "Camera uploads" folder and into a holding folder for later sorting.  There are around 3k images that I would like to move, but t...
Organize
sync
Web
despairbear's avatar
despairbear
New member | Level 2
12 months ago

I ran into the same issue, so I attached a profiler to the browser while it was chewing on 700 files and rummaged through the call stacks. 

Jaythe problem is you've got a quadratic operation in the web UI update after the files have moved. The move operation first sends an async request to the server; this takes about 2 minutes for 700 files.  The costly part is updating the browser afterwards. The UI handles this by doing repeated list_dir calls; each time getting the status of every moved file in a series of list_file_members/batch calls with a limit of 5 each; and then it removes rows from the web interface one at a time. Each row triggers a callback on every other UI element, so it's about 1.5sec of local CPU time per batch, and one batch per five files. 

Walter's avatar
Walter
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
12 months ago

Hey despairbear - thanks for joining the discussion and flagging this with us. 

Does this happen with only a specific web browser you're using? 

Could you just let us know if you're noticing the same behavior after clearing your browser's cache or on another browser, preferably with no extensions or plugins running? 

  • despairbear's avatar
    despairbear
    New member | Level 2
    12 months ago

    Hello Walter -

    This problem occurs in both Chrome and Edge. It even happens on a fresh install of Edge (nothing cached). It's not anything to do with the browser - the problem is due to how a specific piece of the Dropbox Web UI code is engineered. If one of your engineers looks at their profiler while performing a large file move, they'll see the problem and its cause straight away.

    In the meantime I can work around this by avoiding the Web UI, but I figured the result of my investigation might be useful to you.

    • Walter's avatar
      Walter
      Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
      12 months ago

      Thanks for the feedback on this despairbear - I've passed it on to the team internally and you can let us know if you have anything else to add.

      Cheers!

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