PSA re: Recent Performance Issues Caused by the Issue Checker on Backend Workflows

zoe1 · September 21, 2023, 11:22pm

UPDATE [11/1/23]: We released the ability for you to easily toggle on or off the ability to check issues on backend workflows. Read more here.

Hi all –

On September 5th, we shipped a bug fix that turned on the Bubble issue checker for all backend workflows. Prior to that bug fix, the issue checker would run on some backend workflows, but not all of them, and not consistently.

We’ve been pushing hard on editor performance and reliability, and after doing investigations into numerous performance-related bug reports, we realized that turning on the issue checker for backend workflows is causing serious editor performance issues for many applications.

We don’t currently have a solution to reliably run the issue checker on backend workflows without a performance penalty. We have longer-term plans to improve the overall performance of the issue checker, but nothing we can roll out on short notice.

Given that, we believe the best path to making the editor stable and reliable right now is to disable running the issue checker on backend workflows as the default behavior. We have just rolled out a change that will turn it off for backend workflows, causing those types of issues to be hidden.

If you wish to continue using it on backend workflows, you can enable it by adding “&backend_issue_checker=true” as a parameter in the url of the editor. Note that on larger apps, you may experience meaningful performance issues. Reported symptoms include general slowness in the editor, especially when editing in areas such as the API Connector or when navigating between tabs. Our recommendation is to only turn it on periodically to do a validation check of your backend workflows, and not to have it turned on during routine editing work.

We apologize for the inconvenience here – we know the issue checker is an important feature for helping double-check the correctness of your applications. We also know that getting our editor stable, fast, and reliable is really important to the community right now, and think this is the best interim measure to help us get there.

Thank you!

adamKB · September 22, 2023, 12:06am

This was causing a lot of issues for us as our BEWFs and API connector is extensively used. So thank you for this. Will wait to see the results of this in the Editor.
@zoe1 You are right that issue checking is super important. Can I suggest that you add a toggle or switch to make this more accessible to all users rather than relying on copying a URL parameter into the editor URL? For frequent users of the editor this isn’t an issue, but for newcomers or less frequent users, they would have no idea to do this unless they happen to read this post.

ryanellman · September 22, 2023, 12:35am

Awesome, I just refreshed my editor browser tab and it’s a night and day difference. Thanks for the update!

AliFarahat · September 22, 2023, 12:45am

Thank you for the information. This is super helpful

I have two questions please

how does this affect customers on a dedicated server?
how does this affect applications on the agency plan? I’m asking about the agency plan because there might be a change between an immediate and scheduled release of updates

zoe1 · September 22, 2023, 1:42am

@AliFarahat This change has been deployed through our usual pipeline. As such, it is currently available for apps on the Immediate Release. It should be available for apps on Scheduled Release tomorrow at 9AM EST. At that time, apps on the Dedicated Release will also be able to update to get the new code. You can read more about this here.

mghatiya · September 22, 2023, 2:24am

I have been telling for long to Support that maybe Bubble should add a button to do a manual force issue check across the app which we can run once in a while.

And this force issue check should also happen when we are about to make app live.

Apart from the issue that has been mentioned in this thread, issue checker has been unreliable for very long. Many parts of app are not checked at all when things change. And those error get shipped to live also as system would think there are no issues at all.

I understand checking issue for each small edit would definitely be a performance degrading thing. So it is okay if it is not done across the app on each change, but there should be some manual way to force check issue across the app which we can use once in a while as and when we need it.

MattN · September 22, 2023, 4:16am

Second having a toggle for switching this on.

Hell, if it improves performance (and even if it doesn’t), a toggle to turn on/off issues would be great. The amount of times I add ?issues_off=true to the URL just to deploy because the issue(s) that I have aren’t real issues makes would make this a win I think.

emir.ozgun · September 22, 2023, 5:09am

nothing changed, since the bubble editor update on august 6th , issue checker on is not workable even with 1 issue shows, So,as always turn off the issue checker as the best practice.

alxgrepe · September 22, 2023, 6:43am

@zoe1 would the issue checker run for backend workflows when navigating to/manipulating one of them - if not, having it rely on that context sounds like a meaningful way of both having the cake and eat it for now, and one that is less magical

sat_miha · September 22, 2023, 7:36am

?issues_off=true was easier to use for sure

samnichols · September 22, 2023, 6:50pm

+ 1 for a toggle or even just an <a> link somewhere to easily visit the BEWF issue checker or go back to the standard issue checker.

grace.hong · September 22, 2023, 7:17pm

Hey all - thanks for all the feedback, we hear your feedback on a toggle to more easily check issues on backend workflows. Our team is thinking through a few options and will get back to you when our solution’s ready.

aj11 · September 27, 2023, 5:15am

It appears to me that issue checking has been turned off for all pages unless “&backend_issue_checker=true” is appended. “Checking” does not appear in the header on any page unless this is added. Can anyone confirm this?

bart · September 27, 2023, 4:06pm

I actually bookmarked my app editor with the ?issue_off=true addition a year ago

mghatiya · September 30, 2023, 4:42am

I’ve created an ideaboard item too for my suggestion of creating manual button for issue checker in case upvoting it makes it get into pipeline:
https://bubble.io/ideaboard?idea=1696048818394x938700422764822500

Do upvote if you feel it would be good. I know @grace.hong has acknowledged that they are looking into it, but since she didn’t mention whether manual button is considered or not, I just thought of creating ideaboard item itself.

jmalmeida · October 5, 2023, 9:12am

To quickly enable/disable the backend issue checker with a click on a bookmark, follow these steps to add the bookmarklet in Chrome:

Right-click on the bookmark bar and select “Add Page”.
Enter any name for the bookmark (e.g., “Toggle backend issue checker”).
Copy the below JavaScript code and paste it into the “URL” field of the bookmark creation dialog box.
Save the bookmark.
Clicking on the bookmark will enable/disable the checker

Code:

javascript:(function(){
  var searchParams = new URLSearchParams(window.location.search);

  if(searchParams.has('backend_issue_checker')) {
    var currentValue = searchParams.get('backend_issue_checker');
    currentValue = currentValue === 'true' ? 'false' : 'true';     
    searchParams.set('backend_issue_checker', currentValue);
  } else {
    searchParams.append('backend_issue_checker', 'true');
  }

  window.location.search = searchParams.toString();
})();

jonah.deleseleuc · October 5, 2023, 9:17am

I haven’t noticed any significant differences to performance, this might be because my app isn’t ad big as others.

mitchbaylis · October 7, 2023, 4:53am

I had been using bubble editor since this change went live and had no idea that the error checker had been turned off.

It seemed to intermittently be working and I figured it was just “another bubble bug” I’d have to put up with.

To be honest the last month has been incredibly frustrating to work in bubble. There’s been so many changes and not clear communications. I’m sure there’s plenty of other users who are also unaware that the issue checker has been turned off.

It’s more annoying having it off than on - I’d prefer to put up with the performance drag rather than not know about errors I’ve created by changing things. I just turned it on now for a big app and there were 30 errors for things I’ve deleted/changed over the past 2 weeks… no idea what those things are now.

I wasted 15 minutes troubleshooting a workflow today only to find that it wasn’t running because there was an error that wasn’t reported because the error checker has been off.

I’m hopeful that things will get better but things seem to be getting worse the more bubble tries to make it better, at least so far.

jonah.deleseleuc · October 10, 2023, 3:09pm

This has been my experience as well. My satisfaction developing with bubble has decreased significantly. I think this is really hurtful to the community because there is already an inherit distrust in no code solutions in this market, many people brush off no code as a legitimate solution because of concerns about control and ownership of their product and especially reliability. Those concerns have never been more true than today.

In the past 6 months, I have to admit my confidence in the reliability of bubble as a platform has been lower than ever. What I am saying right now should be really concerning to anyone taking “Bubble for Enterprises” seriously. I think the editor’s state at the moment is the exact opposite in terms of quality that an enterprise would expect and pay that kind of pricetag for.

The state of the editor is disappointing to say the least.

crathbun · October 15, 2023, 12:01pm

+1 for toggle top right. Or something to enable it and warn you before deploying that you may not have checked for issues in the backend.