Hello,
For the latest version of our app, we changed the file format, and ever since doing so, Dropbox sync has slowed significantly. I'm wondering if there is anything I can do about this. Some background:
- Our app uses a "file package" format - that is, each project created in the app creates a folder full of files and folders on disk.
- I use the Objective-C Dropbox API.
- The user can choose which folder inside their Dropbox folder our app syncs with.
- I check the files inside the folder using -listFolder:.. and -listFolderContinue:, checking the results against what is on disk to see what needs uploading and downloading.
Our old file format looked like this:
- Project
- - Docs
- - - File 1 Text
- - - File 1 Notes
- - - File 2 Text
- - - File 2 Notes
- - - File 3 Text
- - - File 3 Notes
- - - Etc
Our new file format looks like this (for various reasons):
- Project
- - Docs
- - - File 1 Folder
- - - - Text
- - - - Notes
- - - File 2 Folder
- - - - Text
- - - - Notes
- - - File 3 Folder
- - - - Text
- - - - Notes
So, in our older format, a file containing, say, 100 documents, would have them all together inside a single folder. In our new format, they are split among other subfolders.
The result of this seems to be that Dropbox syncs much more slowly - a project containing 15,000 files using our old format syncs as fast as a project containing only 3,000 files using our new project. And most of this extra time seems to be spent on -listFiles:... and -listFilesContinue...
Of course, the new format will have more files in it since it breaks each file into folders, so that a project using the older format with 100 files may have those 100 files split into 50 format in our new format, so that would add 50 extra folders to be checked. But even taking this into account, the sync is slower. Even a file with, say, 200 files in the older format and 200 files including all the new folders added in the newer format will sync much more slowly for the newer format.
So, my question is, what is the reason for this, and is there anything I can do about it? I'm guessing that it is putting more load on -listFiles:... because it now has to search through more subfolders, but even taking that into account, the slowdown is significant. Is there any way of speeding this process up?
Many thanks,
Keith
