HomeGallery and folders

[gardiol]

Hi! i am exploring all available photo gallery open source tools out there for my self-hosting needs. So far i love how smooth is searching and moving trough photos with HomeGallery!

I have 20+ years of photos stored on the filesystem and sorted by folders, where each folder is an album (an event / trip / whatever). This sorting approach survived many photo organization tools so far and i find it quite effective.

While i have to say that HG approach with tags and smooth navitagion intrigues me a lot, i cannot find me stopping here because i still need to be able to browse my albums. Map view, timeline are cool but not enough.

Is there currently a way to see my folders/albums as they are on disk? Nothing fancy, but let's assume i want to view the photos from that trip i took to France in 2012? Specially, since memory fades, it would be useful to actually be able to see a list of "albums"(folders) like i can see a list of tags (which i love!).

Am i missing something and it's already possible (hope so!) or would it be possible in a near future?

[xemle]

Hi @gardiol

Appologize the late reply.

Thank you for reaching out and bringing up your possitive experience and pointing to your issues. I am happy that you are enjoying the smooth browsing experience like me.

Currently there is no mechanism to browse and drill down the folder structure. While I understand fully your needs and your requirement: Up to now there were more important things to complete than this feature according to my needs.

For me it is more important to have access somehow to all of my images without worring about the different media source folders or the folder structure. I also do not organize my picture in meaningful folder names, while it would be good for better search results.

Because the search honors folder names and the detail view in the single media view offers links to the single (sub) folders. So maybe it might be worth to solve your needs with the keyboard? Have a look to the search docs like path~france 2012 or with an explicit year path~france y:2012?

Other options are: Providing an PR, wait until this feature is implemented or try another gallery. For me this gallery is a spare time fun project and it depends on my free time/mood but also others inputs/work.

Maybe push me from time to time to implement it... I can give also guidance how and were to implement it by your own, if needed.

Does this answers helps you in any way?

[Schnoogemetzger]

Hi,

I have the very same usecase as @gardiol . I think HG is great (good job @xemle 👍 ), but I can't use it due to the missing "browse my folders/albums" feature.

I highly appreciate your work on this and sharing it. Maybe you have some time to implement this @xemle . Would be nice to see this in an upcoming release... :)

[xemle]

Hi @Schnoogemetzger

thank you for sharing your demand.

Currently I am working on a plugin feature so that functionality can be added independently. This is a big thing and will need some time.

If you are able to provide some functionaltiy regarding your request of the folders navigation it would be really great. Pleas let me know if you need further information...

In the meanwhile you can subscribe to this ticket to receive any update and progress on it.

[Schnoogemetzger]

Hi @xemle,

thx for the reply. Browsing the directory structure as on the disk would be sufficient. Let's say these are my folders:

/Pictures/Holiday/2005/USA
/Pictures/Holiday/2017/Iceland
/Pictures/Trips/2007/London
/Pictures/Birthdays/John_Doe
/Pictures/Screenshots
...

You would then select /Pictures as the root directory and you can then click through the albums and sub-albums. Just like you would do with a file explorer.

[gardiol]

I think it can be much easier: create a tag with folder name and attach it to all pictures in that folder, let then browse/select by that tag.

No need to go the folder-tree approach, which is already present on basically any other similar tool and I think it's what set HomeGallery apart from the others, and why I like it.

[Schnoogemetzger]

@gardiol for my understanding: Is this a workaround for you at the moment or a suggestion how to solve it?

[gardiol]

This would solve the issue for me

[xemle]

I like the discussion without me as maintainer ;-) Awesome

IMHO the feature of browsing the folder gives value for people thinking in folders to organize there memories. Since the folder is a very basic computer feature I assume that many people organize there media via that.

Also the implementation should not be too complex. All information are available on the browser. The tags view can be an inspiration for it and can be done within one weekend (for me).

Still, this project is a spare time project and there are also other topics to work on or to complete. So it drills down to the question of priority. Since I do not order my pictures by meaningful folder names this feature has a lower prio than other to me.

I am happy to provide any support if someone is willing to implement that. The dev docs could be a good starter.

[cuks1]

I think it can be much easier: create a tag with folder name and attach it to all pictures in that folder, let then browse/select by that tag.

No need to go the folder-tree approach, which is already present on basically any other similar tool and I think it's what set HomeGallery apart from the others, and why I like it.

This solution would work for me too.

@xemle - your gallery is really the best for home use and I have tried many of them (piwigo, photoview, pigallery2, ...). As you can see the only thing that is missing is folder view (browse by folder) so please be so kind to somehow implement it, maybe by using those tags to auto-generate them from folder name structure.

Thank you in advance, you're doing a great work!

[xemle]

Thank you @cuks1 for your positive feedback and your vote to the folder feature. I feel proud that this one-man gallery gives value to people over other mature solutions. This is definitely a motivation to continue.

Since HomeGallery is a spare time open source project: is there anything you can offer if I would implement the folder feature? I would need support in social advertisements or improvements of the documentation? Any other help would be great, too.

[cuks1]

@xemle Since I am not a programmer I cannot help you with the code but I can help you with the documentation and how-to's.

Regarding the social advertisements maybe I can help with some pc forums and reddit or something. Please contact me on PM so we will see how can I help. We'll figure out something 🙂

[xemle]

Hi @cuks1 thank you for your positive response. I can not find a public address to PM you. Would you mind to contact me via email for further support?

[xemle]

@cuks1 I've replied to your mail. Did you receive it? Maybe in the spam folder?

[cuks1]

I was looking for the answer and you guess, it was in spam folder. I'll reply you via email.

[xemle]

@cuks1 Any progress an on the documentation so far?

[Qronikarz]

I do agree with @gardiol. If HomeGallery can see folders during setup then it would be the easiest way to implement that feature. Clean HTML + JavaScript only let's you see the file name so I unfortunately don't have that possibility in my QMV project.

Speaking of documentation. I have included HomeGallery into my TagsResearch collection. It's not really a documentation in strict sense, but it lists tagging features that the program offers so you can compare with others and make a choice.