Disabled indexing for subfolders but allow browsing

[ktdd]

Description
Disabled indexing for a source in config.yaml and now I can't browse at all.

Expected behaviour
I expect to still see the files.

What is happening instead?
No files are shown. Debug log says:
indexingFiles.go:113: skipping directory / due to exclusion rules

Additional context
Version 0.7.9-beta, Ubuntu 24

I also tried without disabling indexing and instead added two folders to exclude > folders. I can now see every other folder than those two excluded ones and if I try to enter them manually I get an error: "could not refresh file info: directory or item excluded from indexing". Isn't this how exclude works?

[gtsteffaniak]

There were changes and I tested this as I made that change, but this is unexpected. Will take another look

[gtsteffaniak]

Re-tagged 0.7.9 with a fix, can you pull the new version and try again?

[ktdd]

Source 1 (indexing disabled):

I can now browse every directory so that got fixed. Debug log still prints "skipping directory due to exclusion rules" every time I navigate to new directory. No biggie.

Source 2 (excluded one huge subdirectory that doesn't need to be indexed):

I can see the excluded subdir in root view but when I try to enter it, I get a couple of errors and can't enter the directory.

Frontend: Error: {"status":500,"message":"could not refresh file info: directory or item excluded from indexing"}

Backend: [ERROR] middleware.go:419: GET | 500 | 192.168.0.132:51817 | admin | 0ms | "/api/resources?path=%2F[excluded_directory]%2F&source=[source_name]

[gtsteffaniak]

I'm not sure what my goal is for exclusions or how I want to handle it.

At first it was just to ignore indexing to save memory and processing power.

But recently the goal was to hide it from the UI as well, so I would want it to be hidden.

Perhaps I should add an option in each exclude to allow viewing in ui still if desired, just not to index.

Maybe:

server:
  sources:
    - name: "mysource"
      path: "/mnt/folder"
      config:
        exclude:
          allowBrowsing: true
          folders:
            - "/subfolder/ignoreMe"

[gtsteffaniak]

What behavior do you expect or what would you like?

[ktdd]

I'd definitely would like to disable indexing for some subdirectories but still allow browsing them. At first I thought that "neverWatchPaths" config setting would allow it, but I don't think the setting does anything.

How about this:

server:
  sources:
    - name: "mysource"
      path: "/mnt/folder"
      config:
        exclude:
          folders:
            - "/subfolder1"
              allowBrowsing: true
            - "/subfolder2"
              allowBrowsing: false

Or if neverWatchPaths can be utilized, could we use it to disable indexing and use exclude for completely hiding directories?

[cerede2000]

Is this improvement planned soon?

Thx.

[Pierric82]

Hi,

New to quantum, just moved over from old filebrowser.
+1 on this feature request !
I was hopeful it might have been done already when seeing the comment in the full config file, for the "exclude" object: "exclude files and folders from indexing". But setting a folderPaths array in there results in the corresponding folders being hidden as well, so I suppose it's just the comment that's ahead of the feature! I also tried neverWatchPaths, mentioned above but not yet documented in the config file, but it did nothing.

For the record, my use case is 2-fold:

• I have a btrfs snapshots folder I want to expose, to have a quick way to check previous versions of files if needed, without having to mount manually etc. But indexing every snapshot is overkill and results (logically) in duplicate search results, I don't want to do that!
• I have a folder of symlinks to make navigation to deeply nested folders easier. But that means duplicate search results again
  So for those 2 applications, I'd like to be able to browse but not index.

Note: I'm using the (default) docker image, and I see that it's behind the very latest version released yesterday. Just in case this was added then :)

[gtsteffaniak]

Yeah this will require a conflig change. But I know this is an important feature so I will try to implement soon.