Files app favorites

[MTRichards]

As a user, I would like to be able to bookmark certain files to make them extremely easy to access quickly, so that I can open and display files quickly on my iPad and other devices without having to negotiate through all of my existing files on ownCloud.

Can we add a file bookmark?

[jancborchardt]

With the probably upcoming sidebar in the next Files design #1936 it would indeed be good to have a »Favorites« category.

If we do that though we should make sure that from the outset these are synced to the mobile apps where we also use Favorites (which are saved for offline access. cc @rperezb @davivel @jgonzalezsolidgears

[DeepDiver1975]

@MTRichards @jancborchardt OC7

[jancborchardt]

@DeepDiver1975 yes, for sure. Thank you for going through the issues!

[jancborchardt]

Setting to ownCloud 8. Now that we have the sidebar, this is much easier. :)

[jancborchardt]

As a nice start, we could display an entry with the »Favorited on mobile« items in the sidebar.

[rperezb]

Ey @jancborchardt , »Favorited on mobile« can´t be shown on the web interface, at least for the moment, because they are stored internally on the device, furthermore, they deppend on each device.

[jancborchardt]

@rperezb ok – so just as a note, if we want to do this »favorites« function, it would probably be good to sync them properly. :)

[PVince81]

Let's use this ticket for designing and implementing the favorites feature.

CC @owncloud/designers

[PVince81]

CC @karlitschek @craigpg @LukasReschke

[PVince81]

Note: the __FAVORITE__ tag is strictly private (for now) and will not be shared/shareable with other users.
But, should other users see whenever someone has favorited a shared file ?
Should "user2" be able to get a list of every public resource that "user1" has favorited ? (might need extra UI)

[ockham]

@PVince81 There already is code in lib/private/tags related to favorites:

You can mark and unmark an object as a favorite (which is internally using the tag name _$!<Favorite>!$_) using addToFavorites() and removeFromFavorites(). To list all favorites of a given object type, there's getFavorites().

[PVince81]

I haven't looked into the code yet, but great to know that it exists already. Thanks for the info 😄

[ockham]

Yeah, please do check it out!

BTW, in my contacts groups (i.e. tags) sharing PR owncloud/contacts#668 , I'm not having other people's favorites shown to sharees, as I think starring a contact as a favorite is really something only meant to be useful to the owner.

[karlitschek]

@PVince81 yes. Favorites are completely private. Comments and attributes are not.

[PVince81]

Should this be integrated into the files app or a separate app ?
Easiest is integrated as it will remove the need for having hooks in many places.
Having this "favorites" feature permanently there shouldn't hurt as it is non-intrusive.

[PVince81]

Let me reformulate: I will put this directly into the "files" app unless someone has arguments against this.

[PVince81]

Here is what I intend to do:

• add a new entry in the sidebar called "Favorites"
• add a new file list view that appears when clicking "Favorites". It will display a flat list of favorited files, similar to the shares list. Clicking on a file/folder will jump to "All files"
• add a star icon to the left of the thumbnail (new column without header). The star will be yellow/activated when a file is starred, and grey when not starred (see existing star files in img). Clicking the star will show a spinner until the information is saved. The star will be visible in "All files", "Shared" and others (if possible)
• add OCS API endpoint to get favorite files with an optional "path" param (Provide API endpoints for favorites/metadata/tags on files #12337)
• make favorites list use the OCS API endpoint for favorites (no private ajax API) (Provide API endpoints for favorites/metadata/tags on files #12337)
• make the regular file list "All files" call OCS API with the current folder as param to be able to show the stars
• make sure there is an OCP call to get favorites from files (might exist already), use it from the OCS API endpoint

@owncloud/designers I'll leave it up to you to propose changes and provide with a proper star icon (if we don't have one already)

[ockham]

@PVince81 You are going to use the existing favorite mechanism I'm mentioning a bit further above, right?

[PVince81]

Yes, I don't want to reinvent the wheel and will use whatever I find.
Is there a good example I could look at to find how to instantiate the "Tags" class and "TagMapper" ?
I'll probably have to look at the contacts code.

[ockham]

Yeah, that's pretty much the only app I'm aware of that's using it.

[PVince81]

@ockham also if you're interested in working on this or part of this, feel free to join. I'll submit a WIP pull request at some point with some groundwork. Or at least I'll mention you in the PR for reviewing 😄

[ockham]

Cool. I'll be a bit busy in the next couple of weeks, so I can't promise anything, but I'll try to look into the PRs.

[PVince81]

So this means all the API will need to be available directly in core, which is fine.
From a UX point of view this is fine, the little star icon doesn't take much space and can easily be ignored.

My only concern is about performance: when reading the "favorites" information every time the file list is retrieved (either through WebDAV or web UI) there will be an additional performance hit. Putting "favorites" as a feature that cannot be disabled in core means that the potential performance hit will always be there (and I've yet to find a solution to avoid it)

[PVince81]

Until we find a good solution to avoid the potential performance issue I'll keep the code inside the "metadata" app. I can always move it back to core later if needed.

[jancborchardt]

Putting "favorites" as a feature that cannot be disabled in core means that the potential performance hit will always be there

Ok, but in the case of the »Favorites« feature it’s pretty obvious that we’ll have to find a solution to the performance problem rather than burying the functionality, right? It’s a pretty core thing of any file manager / sync app nowadays.

[PVince81]

It doesn't need to be buried, we could also have that app enabled by default., with the option to disable it if people don't use it or have performance issues.

My concern is that we might not have time to solve this until OC 8, so we could keep favorites in this app for testing, and if it does work properly and isn't that big a deal on performance, then we can move it to core.

Anyway, I'll have a chat with @icewind1991 about the performance stuff next week, so we'll see.

[jancborchardt]

Ok, cool.

[PVince81]

After discussing with @icewind1991 we decided to move the "tags injection" into the presentation layer. This is the part that might affect performance, we move it into "ajax/list.php" and later also in WebDAV.

This means that I can move that favorites code into core.
The "metadata" app will be empty until we start implementing tags.

[PVince81]

This PR adds the "favorites" feature to core: #12360
Try it out!

There are still a few rough edges and additional tasks (make the API based on OCS, not REST and adding the "favorites" flag to the WebDAV response, hoping it won't slow down syncing)

[PVince81]

TODOs:

• "favorite" action in UI for files: Add favorites to files app #12360
• sidebar item in files app to list favorite files/folders Add favorites to files app #12360
• OCP API convenience methods to set/unset/read the favorite flag
• OCS API / WebDAV API to set/unset/read the favorite flag (Provide API endpoints for favorites/metadata/tags on files #12337) can be done with PROPPATCH on WebDAV entry: Returns tags through WebDAV #12865
• TODO: OCS / WebDAV API depending on what we want: Provide API endpoints for favorites/metadata/tags on files #12337 see WebDAV API
• TODO: add WebDAV property Return tags/favorites in WebDAV calls #12856 PR Returns tags through WebDAV #12865
• push favorite actions to activity stream (Activity extension for favorites owncloud-archive/metadata#3)
• toggle sending notification only for favorites (Notify changes for favorites files #12872)
• TODO: hook to auto-delete tags when user is deleted: Deleting user must delete all their tags #12816
• TODO: hook to auto-delete tags when a file disappears from view (deleted, moved out of share, unshared) @schiesbn told me it might be tricky... Auto-delete tags when a tagged file isn't visible any more #12858
• sync client support ?

[jancborchardt]

This was added to master through the »Favorites« feature #12360 and will be released with ownCloud 8.

[PVince81]

@jancborchardt this isn't finished, see TODO list above

[Bugsbane]

What would be a thing of pure beauty, would be being able to share any given tag, in the exact same way we currently can share files.

I would love to be able to organize my photos according to my own system, and then have all the ones tagged "family" to automatically be shared with everyone in my family group, or to tag files with "client-updates" and automatically have them be shared with my client group.

Yes, I can manually share files with these groups now, but only files, and even then, it's still an extra step, for every single file, to have to tag it, and then also manually share it. I'm sure that having hundreds of individual files being manually shared must clutter the database more than just having the relevant files have a tag, and a single share entry to say that tag x is shared with y.

[DeepDiver1975]

@PVince81 missing todos are topic for OC8.1 from my understanding - right?

[PVince81]

When I asked @karlitschek he said it's ok to implement the "tags cleanup" part as part of 8.0, as far as I understood.
However I think the changes might be bigger, but I'll give it a shot within the next weeks and we'll see from the PRs.

[PVince81]

@Bugsbane interesting idea. Can you make a separate enhancement ticket for this ?

[karlitschek]

Yes. This can be seen as a bugfix. I don´t hope a lot of code is needed for that.

[Bugsbane]

@PVince81 Sure thing.

[SergioBertolinSG]

Related bugs of favorite feature:

• Grey star after renaming star gone after rename a favorite folder #13215
• Double renaming in favorites Can not rename folder twice in Favorites #12944
• Cancel sharing and share again, still favorite cancel and share again, still favorite #13216
• Textfiles can't be edited in favorites tab [Favorite ] Textfiles can't be edited in the favorites tab #13273
• Favorite file moved into a shared folder as recipient is no longer favorite [Favorite] Favorite file moved into a shared folder as recipient is no longer favorite #13274
• Files and folders explored from shared tabs in the side panel can't be favorited. [Favorite] Files and folders explored from shared tabs in the side panel can't be favorited. #13321

Indirectly related:

• Explicit PROPFIND of getcontenttype returns 404 on folders Explicit PROPFIND of getcontenttype returns 404 on folders #13313

[nickvergessen]

@PVince81 this can be closed since all other sub tasks have their own tickets right?

[MorrisJobke]

@nickvergessen Let's keep it open untill we have a label for the tags feature to not lose the list of tag related issues. Something like `feature:tags" came in my mind ;)

[nickvergessen]

The label has been created and added to all the ticket closing