Mobile App - Performance issues

[sryn101]

What's happened?
Major performance issues in Android Mobile App when:

1. Responding or commenting on posts
2. Opening the mobile app - on splash screen
3. Clicking on notifications on screen

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open Mobile app, comment on a particular post - it takes more time
2. Just Open mobile app for the firs time - Takes more time on splash screen
3. Click on a notification - take more time to open

What's expected?

Comments should work similar to chat - very quick. Splash screen opening or notification openings shouldn't take more than 3 seconds.

Browsers and Devices tested

Android Mobile app

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Server information

php 7.1 apache

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phpFox version

phpFox 4.8.0

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Screenshots

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[harrison05]

Hi @sryn101

About your report:

1. Open Mobile app, comment on a particular post - it takes more time

When you comment on a post, mobile app needs to call API to save your comment, loading time based on your network and server-side.

2. Just Open mobile app for the firs time - Takes more time on splash screen

We're improving loading time on mobile app, we will inform you if have any updates.

3. Click on a notification - take more time to open

If you click on notification at Notification Tab on App, this is a same case with 1. For the first time, we must load item data from the server-side, it takes some time.
If you click on notification at Notification Bar on your Phone: we're improving this case to reduce loading time.

Regards.

[sryn101]

Thanks Harrison for providing the details. For comments and notifications (case 1 and 3), can we not use Websockets with Node JS instead of Request-Response client server architecture?

Major performance issues are around comments and notifications (besides initial loading), so leveraging Node JS and websockets (to push the changes on server side) which drastically improve the performance, this is what is being used in all modern web technologies.

I was told that Mobile App is using ReactJS, so leveraging above architecture should be easy. Please let me know your thoughts.

[jwpwhite]

Hi @sryn101
I have been experiencing similar performance issues.
The reason why Chat opens so quickly is because phpFox used Realm Database technology. Realm Database is a cutting edge technology for offline first applications. It is incredibly quick because everything loads from the local realm database which is in turn kept in sync with your server.

The rest of the apps offline functionality however unfortunately don't use Realm's Database. From what I have been told, they use a serialised dictionary for iOS and SQLite database for Android. This solution sort of does the trick but doesn't seem show anything like the sort of performance they could have got from using Realm Database for their offline mode.

We are pretty disappointed with the performance so looking into a custom implementation of Realm's Database.

Other issues relating to the chosen offline technology for the apps:
Online opening app is slow - Offline opening app is quick
Large Image upload in Offline Mode
Offline mode for native apps - Realm database

Let us know your thoughts.

[sryn101]

Great thoughts @jwpwhite I see that you had proposed this solution to PHPFox last year in March and it was implemented last month as per this PHPfox-Official/phpfox-v4-feature-requests#804

@harrison05 Can you confirm by when Realm Database technology will be used for entire app?

[spirogg]

@harrison05 have we implemented this for both IOS and Android apps yet or are you all working n V5 phpfox and will get the apps updated to work with version 5 when it is released?

@jwpwhite have you found a better solution or have you purchased the Ultimate pkg and happy with IOS and Android apps latest updates and performance ?

@sryn101 how about you are you using the IOS and Android apps already? how is the latest updates on the apps better or the same?

I am getting close to making a purchasing decision on upgrading to ultimate pkg and getting the IOS and Android apps, but im testing and somethings still seem slow.

I'm wondering to wait another few months and see if version 5 of phpfox has major improvements in speed etc, and if the IOS and Android apps will follow and have way better performance and speed.

right now I have this server

2x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2670 v2 @ 2.50GHz
128gb Ram
2x 500GB SSD In RAID 1

just want to make sure before I spend the money or should I wait till version 5 for the apps?

[sryn101]

Hi @spirogg Sorry for the delay in responding, I am not that active here...

Regarding to performance issue, it is better than before.. I see that @harrison05 has marked it as enhancement, hope they will improve it more...

Regarding sever, I suggest you go with PHPFox hosting service, the reason is, I am using Hostiso (Who is recommended by PHPFox as well), however, whenever we have these such performance issues, hosting service provider says it is program issue contact PHPFox and if you contact PHPFox support they will say its a server issue you need to check with hosting provider... so to avoid that confusion you can write to PHPFox support, they will help you with hosting service..

Hope that helps.

[spirogg]

@sryn101 thanks so much for you reply. I appreciate it. Well spoken

[jwpwhite]

Hi @spirogg
We need more robust offline functionality for our custom developments.
The current offline functionality doesn't work for us so we are busy integrating our own custom offline functionality.

[spirogg]

@jwpwhite thanks for your reply. Hoping all goes well.

[sryn101]

I guess PHPFox didn't understand the issue correctly, they just made sure that the app works when its offline (When no internet is connected), Proposal was to store the data locally for faster loading... @harrison05 any thoughts by when can you implement it so that initial load time is fast enough?

[tonyphpfox]

Hi @sryn101,
We will review performance aspect of phpFox Mobile App and do some adjustment to make it better in version 1.8.0

Regards.