Somewhat excessive version checks

Hi!

If I read the code correctly, pgadmin will (unless turned off) hit the
website to check the version.json file for updates *every time it
starts*.

Wouldn't it make sense to rate limit that to checking say once per 24
hours maximum? Or even 48?

It seems nobody needs the update *that* quickly, and AFAICT it does
call out to make that check synchronously on startup which means the
user is waiting.

And if/when doing that, it would be useful to include an
If-Modified-Since header on the request, so the server can just
respond with a tiny 304 reply when there is no update, which is going
to be the majority of the time. Or possibly even more efficiently,
create a custom etag and use If-None-Matches. If you make that etag be
say the version that the client has, it becomes very cheap to check
and you don't need to track any extra data.

--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: https://www.hagander.net/
 Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/

Hi!

If I read the code correctly, pgadmin will (unless turned off) hit the
website to check the version.json file for updates *every time it
starts*.

Wouldn't it make sense to rate limit that to checking say once per 24
hours maximum? Or even 48?

It seems nobody needs the update *that* quickly, and AFAICT it does
call out to make that check synchronously on startup which means the
user is waiting.

And if/when doing that, it would be useful to include an
If-Modified-Since header on the request, so the server can just
respond with a tiny 304 reply when there is no update, which is going
to be the majority of the time. Or possibly even more efficiently,
create a custom etag and use If-None-Matches. If you make that etag be
say the version that the client has, it becomes very cheap to check
and you don't need to track any extra data.

On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 9:57 AM Dave Page <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 10:06 PM Magnus Hagander <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> Hi!
>>
>> If I read the code correctly, pgadmin will (unless turned off) hit the
>> website to check the version.json file for updates *every time it
>> starts*.
>
>
> Every time the server starts, which is a little different, but still...

Hmm. So one of us is definitely reading things wrong then :) I see it
in the index() method, which has an URL router for / -- isn't that
called for every time somebody somebody starts their browser to it?
I'm not saying for every reload, but with a server install with 10
users, won't it do it once for each?

Or when is that actually called?

>> Wouldn't it make sense to rate limit that to checking say once per 24
>> hours maximum? Or even 48?
>
>
> That certainly wouldn't be a bad idea.
>
>>
>>
>> It seems nobody needs the update *that* quickly, and AFAICT it does
>> call out to make that check synchronously on startup which means the
>> user is waiting.
>>
>> And if/when doing that, it would be useful to include an
>> If-Modified-Since header on the request, so the server can just
>> respond with a tiny 304 reply when there is no update, which is going
>> to be the majority of the time. Or possibly even more efficiently,
>> create a custom etag and use If-None-Matches. If you make that etag be
>> say the version that the client has, it becomes very cheap to check
>> and you don't need to track any extra data.
>
>
> Patches welcome!

Hah, I clearly can't even figure out when the method is called :)

And presumably you'd also want some place to store the state between
calls, so you can keep showing the warnings about upgrades? Do you
have state storage for such things arleady=