Symphony.

Hello everyone!

Another newbie question here:

I’m building a showcase website for my ex degree course using Symphony. Right now I’m structuring the content in the back-end, planning to have a select box link field (actually I’m using a reference link field) in the section “projects” to link each project to its author/s and a subsection manager field to link each project to images too.

I’ve assumed (more or less) that every year there are 30 new students and 200 new images: this means (maybe exaggerating a little) in 5 years the numbers of entries addressed by the select box link field will be something like 150 students and the one addressed by the subsection manager field will be something like 1000 images.

I’m wondering: is there a limit to the number of entries these extensions can handle in the back-end? How does a subsection manager field populated with 1000 images work when I’ve to add and link images to a new project?

I’m worried about such a long long long list…

Thanks!

Independent of the field you are using to fetch your data, loading the publish page will take longer the more entries you have in your linked section. Select Box Link and Subsection Manager both use a select box to store their data and they will both have to create full list of all linked items (e. g. 1000 image entries). I never tested Subsection Manager with such a large number of entries but the queue list will certainly become slower the more items it contains (it’s loaded using AJAX when you first click inside the browse field). It also will take longer to build the Subsection Manager interface which is handled by JavaScript.

Thanks Nils for your help. Therefore my approach to structuring the content is indeed deleterious in the long run. Do you have any suggestion for managing such a large numbers of entries (especially the images’ ones) without facing certain rout?

A solution could be splitting the images section in smaller ones, but I don’t think I’ll be able to address each of them depending on the case through the same subsection manager field, will I?

When you need to link your two sections you don’t really have a back door. The only way would be to adjust the existing extensions to only load your list of subitems on request and filtered by a search term (this can be done using AJAX). This would be possible with Subsection Manager when we talk about the interface (which could be speeded up this way). But still you would have to get rid of the full list of subitems in the select box. If you remove that list you will also remove the fallback to use your field as a simple select box when JavaScript might not be available or broken due to other JavaScript errors.

Unfortunatly my programming knowledge is quite basic: how much difficult is it trying to adjust the existing extensions using AJAX?

Otherwise I’ve to come up to another solution to solve at least the images management workflow and in this second case I’m totally open to suggestions, if you don’t mind sharing them, thanks!

To be honest: You are talking about the next five year to get around 1000 entries. In five years of time you won’t be using the Symphony that you are using today. My advice would be to use one of the existing fields (Select Box Link, Subsection Manager or something similar) and to monitor the site’s behaviour. In the meantime both, Symphony and the fields, will be improved and we will certainly find a way to handle large numbers of entries in Subsection Manager over the time.

Mmm, you’re right Nils!

”cross your bridges when you come to them“

Thank you very much for the help!