Images: Upload, Database reference, or URL?

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1

Hi gang!

Which solution renders fastest in the app: Uploading an image, adding the images to a database and referencing them from there, or hosting images on a cloud server and referencing them by URL?

Thanks!
Henk

2

Howdy Henk :slight_smile:

I’ve done some thorough testing to see which loads the fastest a few months back. There are 3 methods and I’ll break them down for you:

  1. Internal Adalo Database (using Image parameter as Image)
  2. Internal Adalo Database (using Image parameter as URL)
  3. External Database (using image parameter as URL)

1 - Internal Adalo Database (using Image parameter)
This loads the fastest by default as long as the images are not huge. As far as I can tell, this is the same way that regular uploaded images are rendered.

2 - Internal Adalo Database (using Image parameter as URL)
This loads the 2nd fastest but has the ability to load faster than option 1 if you use IMGIX rendering to compress and render a smaller image size. Adalo uses IMGIX, so you have the ability to use the query parameters to compress and render smaller images that will load much faster.

For Example: {url}&compress=auto&w=100&h=100

Use the magic text URL for the image path and then set the width and height. This will force the image to render as a 100x100 image and it should be a much smaller file size so it should load faster.

3 - External Database (using image parameter as URL)
This loads the slowest as it’s pulling from an external source and may not have compression.