AJAX error when importing a large number of courses

[bberndt-uaz]

Problem/Motivation

Users have encountered problems when trying to use the Quickstart Course module to import large numbers of courses on Pantheon sites.

Describe the bug

When attempting to import a large number of courses using the "Save and Import Courses" button on the Import UA Courses configuration page, the import may end prematurely and display an AJAX error:

• This behavior is likely to occur when importing all courses for a particular course code (such as OPTI).
• This error may occur on sites hosted on Pantheon. On the other hand, the error does not seem to occur when performing a course import on a local environment.

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Install the Quickstart Course module on a Pantheon site
2. Install the Quickstart HTTP module to improve the course import performance
3. Go to /admin/config/az-quickstart/courses
4. Enter OPTI in the "Courses to Import" text area
5. Click the "Save and Import Courses" button
6. Observe the progress of the import eventually stall and an AJAX error message appear

Proposed resolution

@tadean mentioned at least two possible options for addressing this issue:

• Increasing the number of retries in the Quickstart HTTP module
• Adding some sanity check where if it runs out of retries it just returns nothing

Expected behavior

The import process should complete successfully or handle any errors that occur.

Additional context

This issue may be related to the PHP settings for max_input_time or max_execution_time. See Timeouts on Pantheon.