[pmwiki-users] pagelists link= with pages generated externally

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Sat, May 26, 2007 at 11:08:36PM +0200, Christophe David wrote:
> However, when you have **many** files to import (as when you have one
> page per record in an "emulated database", your often reach the server
> timeout when importing.
> 
> May I suggest to add one more configuration variable to specify a
> maximum script running time or a maximum number of files to import in
> one run ?

Sure, we can do that.  But note the caveat below...

> This way, the first request could import a first batch of files
> without reaching the timeout, then a subsequent request would import
> the next batch and so on.

Part of the problem is that it may then be a while before a
subsequent request imports the next batch.  In fact, it'll take
$ImportFreq seconds, or possibly forever if $ImportFreq is not
set.

The reason for this is that the import routine has to save
whatever work it has done in a .lastimport file, which means
that .lastimport will then have a timestamp later than any of
the files or the import directory itself.  So, it won't 
automatically trigger on the next request.

I suppose we could create a '.moreimports' file that tells
subsequent requests that there is more importing to be done...
but somehow that doesn't feel like a very clean design.

Suggestions welcomed.

Pm