Albums: Ignore public filter if "Private" feature is disabled in Settings

[Kafkalasch]

1. What is not working as documented?

The Setting Settings -> General -> Private states:

Excludes content marked as private from search results, shared albums, labels and places.

This works as expected, when turned on. But if I turn it off, all that happens is that the private section on the left hand site disappears. The photos are cannot be viewed anymore. This does not seem to be a cache issue as this stays such even after refreshing the browser.

2. How can we reproduce it?

Steps to reproduce the behavior:
Go to demo version of photoprism

1. Verify that settings -> private is on (or turn it on)
2. Go to calender -> Feb 2017, and select the flower and mark it private.
3. Verify that it is not shown any more of you re-open the view
4. Turn settings -> private off
5. Go to calender -> Feb 2017, you still cannot see the flower.

3. What behavior do you expect?

I would expect to see the photos again when turning the settings->private flag off.

Basically this is my usecase:
-> If I want to show the photos to friends/family, I set the flag in the settings to true
-> If I want to show the photos to my partner, I would like to disable the privacy setting to see all photos in folders/places/month view. But this does not work

4. What could be the cause of your problem?

I assume that the UI/backend still check the private flag. No matter how the settings are.
So basically, instead of (pseudo-code):
shouldIncludePhoto = photo.private !== true
one should check
shouldIncludePhoto = settings.private === true && photo.private !== true

But this is just an assumption, I haven't checked this in the source code.

[lastzero]

This actually only affects the user interface, i.e. pictures that are already marked as private will not be displayed just because the section and action buttons are not visible. Our documentation should be improved in this regard. Feel free to contribute by sending a pull request!

[Kafkalasch]

Hmm... but this doesn't feel at least like it should be. when I disable the "setting: private", I would expect that

• section and action buttons are not visible any more
• any private photos are visible everywhere again
  So basically that the concept of "private" does not exist any more.

[Kafkalasch]

So, I could have a look into how this is done in the frontend and make it such that it behaves as I described above. Is this ok? Then the documentation wouldn't need no update

Is it clear what I mean? Or shall I try to elaborate?

[Kafkalasch]

Funny thing is, that this seems to not affect the search results. So if "settings:private" is off, photos previously marked as private appear in search result. they simply don't appear in folders/months/places/etc.

[lastzero]

These are automatically created search filters and have a visibility flag based on if there are any matching pictures. Also they have cached counts. So possible that it's a tradeoff to avoid inconsistencies. We are currently on vacation and can't look into it. Long time since I implement it. To display all photos, setting photos.photo_private to 0 via SQL and then run index once to trigger an update is the fastest way.

[Kafkalasch]

photos.photo_private to 0 via SQL

I guess this would delete all the markers from the photos. This is not what I want to accomplish.

Basically what I want:

• Settings.Private-Mode ON => Private marker of photos can be edited. Photos are shown in "Private" Section. Photos are not shown anywhere else
• Settings.Private-Mode OFF => Private marker of photos cannot be edited. "Private" Section does not exist. Photos are shown everywhere. (Simply as if the word "private" would not exist)
• Settings.Private-Mode ON => All photos that have the private marker are invisible again

Note, that the private marker on photos are not deleted or reset if set to Settings.Private-Mode OFF. They are simply ignored.

Do you understand what I mean? Sorry, if I don't use the correct terms. Haven't wen't through the entire Developer-Docs and code base yet.

[Kafkalasch]

But this is nothing urgent, please enjoy your vacation =)

[lastzero]

I understand what you are trying to accomplish. The reason it doesn't currently work as you expect is that "public:true" is part of the auto-generated search filter used to implement folders, places, states, months and so on:

path:"2001/18. Oktober 2001" public:true

See albums.album_filter. If you change the feature flag, the values of this column are not affected in any way. So nothing changes with respect to existing album filters.

Theoretically, we could ignore the public filter completely, but I want to make absolutely sure that this has no unintended side effects. Meaning, this is not a "quick win." In the short term, it seems best to update the docs.

[lastzero]

This commit to implement your request has changed 91 files, which means it's pretty significant. Please test these changes extensively while we are on vacation! Thank you 👍

Also note that the "Private" feature is a (possibly user-specific) setting, not a global configuration option. For this reason, I have refrained from showing photos marked as private in the shares, even if "Private" is turned off. Users might otherwise unintentionally share photos they don't want to show. At the very least, this should be well documented and discussed with the community.