image/image_import timeouts

I suspect that this is a pretty widespread problem among those of us who use shared hosting: timeouts while using image_import. When it happens, I get partially imported images - some have just the original (fine, because it recreates thumbs, etc.), but some have just the preview/thumbnail!

It's also a pain because I can only do 2-5 high-res pics at a time. I have to re-enter everything again manually.

Here's my work-around. Feel free to use, improve, or shoot it down.

First, I modified image_import_form_submit to output items to a queue table. One row per image:

function image_import_form_submit($form_id, $form_values) {
.
.
.
$db_insert_values = array(
//          $node = image_create_node_from(
            $filename,
            $form_values['title'][$index],
            $form_values['body'][$index],
            preg_replace('/\n|  /','', var_export($form_values['taxonomy'],TRUE))
          );
$db_insert = 'INSERT INTO {image_import_queue} (filepath, title, body, taxonomy) VALUES (\''.implode('\', \'', preg_replace('/\'/','\\\'', $db_insert_values)) . '\')';
db_query($db_insert);
.
.
.

Next, I created a page which reads one record at a time and imports it:

$query = db_query('SELECT * FROM {image_import_queue}');
while($item = db_fetch_array($query)) {
    if(is_writable($item['filepath'])) {
        print $item['filepath'].'<br />'.$item['title'].'<br />'.$item['body'].'<br />'.$item['taxonomy'].'<br />';
        $node = image_create_node_from($item['filepath'], $item['title'], $item['body'], $item['taxonomy']);
        print '<p><a href="' . base_path() . "/node/$node->nid\">$node->title</a></p>";
        db_query('DELETE FROM {image_import_queue} WHERE filepath='.$item['filepath'].' LIMIT 1');
        break;
    }
}

I then have Greasemonkey refresh the page continuously to empty the queue. I can do hundreds of images with minimal effort.

Obviously this has some security concerns: I wasn't careful about validating user inputs. I'm also no PHP guru - C++ is my thing - so it could probably be neater.

I was thinking that this could be a useful option to the image module, with the import being triggered either client-side using Javascript refreshes or server-side using cron.

Now...critique my amateurish code! :)