[Qgis-developer] Plugins.xml slow

[Alex Mandel]

I've been seeing reports that the plugins.xml is slow
http://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/plugins.xml

I know there is work to move this to the Docker hosting.

But I had another idea. I'm assuming that it's currently generated out
of Django. I think we need to find a way to put a cache in place to make
the server response faster. Obviously a cache would be tricky if a new
plugin is uploaded. But the cache expire is say every 10 minutes, that's
still only 6 reloads of the view per hour instead of how many hits from
people checking plugins (100s-1000s per hour).

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/cache/
FYI we should cache this file in RAM since it's 1 small file.

Looking at
https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Django/blob/master/qgis-app/plugins/views.py

I see that it might be tricky because the server is trying to filter the
list before sending to the user. Maybe there's some way around that like
redirecting users to a slightly different url when they request 1.8
plugins. No change necessary on the desktop side if the fetch is allowed
to follow to a different url.

Thanks,
Alex