There is a GET request to fetch the avatar for every contact independently

[ibahnasy]

Describe the bug

While scrolling contacts, it generates their avatars using the contact's initials and the Contacts app performs a GET request for every contact to fetch it's avatar which results in very slow rendering and high load on the server that consumes all of the PHP-FPM pool children (120) until the loading is completed.

BTW, I have more than 1000 contacts.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open the Contacts app
2. Scroll the contacts list and wit until it loads the avatars.

Expected behavior

There should be an option to disable generation of avatars using the contacts initials and use a generic avatar which should be fetched once for all contacts who have no photo.

This would save lots of CPU load and traffic, and will have fast page rendering.

Actual behavior

Contact version

5.5.3

Operating system

Ubuntu 24.04

PHP engine version

PHP 8.1

Web server

Nginx

Database

MariaDB

Additional info

Also using Redis, OPCache and APCu.