allow to re-order items within a shelf

[maxlath]

Re-ordering items has been a recurring feature request.

This could be implemented by adding an ordinal to items' shelves array, from the current array of id:

[
  '0a35e15bdff5c8c0507207898f00003c',
  'a51ca773050dc882b8105b0d18000ecc'
]

to an array of objects:

[
  { id: '0a35e15bdff5c8c0507207898f00003c', ordinal: 5 },
  { id: 'a51ca773050dc882b8105b0d18000ecc' }
]

This should allow to get the items of a given shelf already ordered directly from CouchDB

[jum-s]

isnt an array already an ordered list, one can query with an index, reorder at will etc. ?

[maxlath]

@jum-s the array above is on a single item that is in several shelves, the ordinal then gives the place of that item within those different shelves.

For instance, the 2 following items could be ordered within 3 different shelves like so:

{
  _id: 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa',
  entity: 'isbn:9782729897093',
  shelves: [
    { id: '0a35e15bdff5c8c0507207898f00003c', ordinal: 1 },
    { id: 'a51ca773050dc882b8105b0d18000ecc', ordinal: 1 },
    { id: 'cce00081d0b5018b288cd050377ac15a', ordinal: 2 }
  ]
}

{
  _id: 'bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb',
  entity: 'isbn:9781941999738',
  shelves: [
    { id: '0a35e15bdff5c8c0507207898f00003c', ordinal: 2 },
    { id: 'a51ca773050dc882b8105b0d18000ecc', ordinal: 2 },
    { id: 'cce00081d0b5018b288cd050377ac15a', ordinal: 1 }
  ]
}

[jum-s]

im a bit rusty, my bad

[jum-s]

the other question to me is : isnt it the client responsibility to sort items. Is it that necessary to store this information server-side ? Users may not that much appreciate to sort "for good" and just according to the current need/mood.
I guess it depends also how users may sort items (completely custom order, or only according to some criterias (alphabetical title, alphabetical first author, last added, by transations etc)).

[maxlath]

I see 2 distinct features:

• the possibility to dynamically re-order the items in an inventory or shelf in various ways : by title or author sorted alphabetically, by publication date, by date of addition to the inventory (the only mode currently available). This kind of sort could be done by anyone browsing an inventory and are mostly a problem for the client (even if that requires that the server be able to produce those items list paginated in those different orders, unless we fully load the inventory items in the client, but that's likely to not scale for large inventories)
• the possibility for an inventory or shelf owner to modify the default order, to present their inventory in a certain order to visitors, just like a book shop or a library would physically organize their display shelf ([fr] présentoir à livre). That's this feature that I was describing, which, to be visible by others than the inventory owner, would need to be saved in the database.

[alexture]

Also ties in to #315