5.12 showmembers not showing correct last photo(NOT A BUG)

Astaran · July 11th, 2005, 12:49 PM

The showmembers page isn't showing the last photo of a user.
Example:
http://fotogalerie.herr-der-ringe-fi...rs.php/cat/500

First row shows the the gallery of "Daphna".
According to this page the last photo was posted on 10.7.2005 12:45, showing a thumbnail of http://fotogalerie.herr-der-ringe-fi...41DSC01308.JPG.

Viewing that photo directly will show you, that it has been published on 2.5.2005

Link to this photo is:
http://fotogalerie.herr-der-ringe-fi...0/ppuser/14241

I think this is caused by the sql query that is used to build showmembers.php. It uses GROUP BY, which brings up a wrong image id, depending on the sort order used.

Michael P · July 11th, 2005, 01:34 PM

Correct, we do not show the last photo and this is a known issue which has no solution at this time (this has been covered several times in the forums).

In order to use a single query to get the member listing we use the GROUP BY which does not allow us to sort the date for the last photo uploaded. However, prior to this an additional query for every user displayed was required - which meant alot of queries per page.

We do not have a solution as yet to do both a single query and get the last photo.

Astaran · July 11th, 2005, 01:43 PM

If I understand the code correctly, you have all userids after the query has been performed. Couldn't you use a second query then using WHERE userid IN (userid1,userid2,userid3,userid4,...) to get the last photo for each user.

With grabbing the userid and bigimage fields from the database, you get all information needed to map the fotos to the correct user. This would only add one additional query per page which uses an existing index.

Michael P · July 11th, 2005, 01:45 PM

That's an approach I hadn't considered; so will look into it as a possible quick solution.

kturby · July 13th, 2005, 09:47 PM

Michael,

How is the possible quick solution for this one coming along? This is one that causes a LOT of flailing with our users... both from the aspect of complaints and "reported as a bug"... and from the aspect of user satisfaction. They really seem to like seeing their latest photo thumbnail up on the page.

kturby · August 27th, 2005, 09:40 PM

Is a fix for this being worked on? Even considered? Not updating the thumbnail of member galleries is a signficant dissatisfaction for our users.

Astaran · September 3rd, 2005, 12:46 PM

Yes, any news on this would be appreciated. My users are really annoyed and it generates a lot of support requests.

Astaran · September 16th, 2005, 04:13 PM

Sorry, but I must beg you about this one. Any news on this? Is this being worked on, can we expect a fix soon?

pengrus · September 18th, 2005, 11:24 AM

Add my voice here. Hope we can get a better solution at this. Thanks!

mjm · September 18th, 2005, 06:40 PM

Agreed.
To have a column titled - Last Photo Upload with date under thumb - is not a bug??
In addition, stuck thumb showing for some members is not good representation of their pics ...

~ Mark

Chuck S · September 18th, 2005, 08:32 PM

It is not a bug as Michael explained why it is the way it is.

mjm · September 18th, 2005, 09:43 PM

As Michael says here ... "It's a trade-off" ... ( which has the same irritable sensation of a bug bite

)

"It's an issue of efficency; in the prior version of PhotoPost we did the main query and then if you were viewing thumbnails a second query for each member being displayed to find the latest thumbnail. This means that the showmembers page with 30 members would result in 30 additional queries per page. Using the method, we save the 30 queries, but loose the last photo uploaded thumbnail. It's a trade-off.

MySQL does support sorting columns during the GROUPing of records, by grouping the records from the photos table, we save any processing of members who have no photos at all."

-------
On a user perspective, this is a very big trade-off because it affects the front door to their gallery of pics.

Am I correct to presume that this was a trade-off for providing the Group by Member / Sort by Feature?
Or was the show last photo feature going to be removed anyway to improve performance?

I understand, Chuck, that you don't consider this a bug support issue, so would you be so would you be so kind as to move it to the Discussion or Suggestions Forum?

~ Mark
I get this creepy pestering feeling replying to a 'Not a Bug' Thread in the Bug Forum

Astaran · September 19th, 2005, 03:53 AM

Well, I'm not in the position to say if it's a bug or not. What I can say is that in prior version the last uploaded photo has been showed in this column. That's why the column header says "last uploaded photo". So the expected behaviour is exactly that.

If your intention was to change the behaviour of the software, please just communicate that and rename the column heading to something like "random photo".

Considering the fact that this changed behaviour wasn't mentioned in the release information and reading Michael's post in this thread, I got the impression that he
classifies this as a bug (with status OPEN), but hasn't come up with a appropriate solution yet. That's why a suggested a possible solution that only adds one extra query.

So I'd really appreciate a reply from the lead developer that clarifies the situation so that everyone knows if that issue will be tackled or not.

Chuck S · September 19th, 2005, 06:15 AM

Michael did reply Astaran that is why the thread has been marked essentially resolved. There are two threads on this issue

5.11 MembersList Format - last photo upload thumbnail not most recent

MJM trade off,efficiency, speed whatever

Essentially he is saying that with the efficient code that he can not grab the last photo since you can't sort within a group by mysql statement. He decided not to run 30 additional queries per page and that is the trade off he is referring to. If it is decided it is in the best interest of the program to go in a direction to improve speed and it is suppose to be coded this way then it is not considered a bug.

Astaran · September 19th, 2005, 07:16 AM

Ok, thx for the clarification.I'll come up with my own solution then. One additional query will be sufficient. There's no need to make 30 additional queries.