Add a "Started On" date field to books

[MoXcz]

What would you like Grimmory to do?

Right now there's no way to track when I actually started a book, only when I finished it. I'd like to see how long something took me from start to finish to keep a more accurate reading timeline/history without depending on reading sessions.

This would go hand-in-hand I think with the Hardcover integration, as Hardcover does save when the book was started.

What problem does this solve for you?

Right now there's no reliant way to track when I actually started a book inside Grimmory, only when I finished it. I'd like to see how long something took me from start to finish, and keep a more accurate reading timeline/history.

There's more or less a Started On date that can be captured from the reading sessions, it's just not really visible unless going to that menu and, it woud also be great to be able to manually set the starting reading date of a book.

Anything else?

I'm not experienced with Spring Boot but doing a quick glance with the help of AI I'd assume the implementation would be similar to how "Finished On" works right now but following different rules to when it's first set (which in this case would be when the book is first marked as "Reading").

I imagine it like this:

Then set to 'Reading':

And 'Read':

Which by reading the AI suggestions would require a migration for user_book_progress similar to migration 40:

ALTER TABLE `user_book_progress` 
ADD COLUMN `date_started` timestamp NULL DEFAULT NULL,
ADD INDEX `idx_user_book_progress_date_started` (`date_started`);

And then have frontend/backend changes that make the date finished field possible.

Which could then also be used for sorting and magic shelves (see which books were read in x amount of days, weeks, months, etc. by subtracting the finished date from the starting date).

Want to help out?

I'm happy to help test and give feedback

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