pigallery2-sort-dir-lastmod-extension

A pigallery2 extension to sort directories based on their last modification date only.

This extension is built on top of the pigallery2-sample-extension template.

Motivation

I prefer the folders in my gallery to be sorted by their last modification date ( like ls -ltr on Linux ). Although pigallery2 provides a "Sort directories by date" option in the settings page and even states that:

Directory date is the last modification time of that directory not the creation date of the oldest photo.

However, the actual behavior still uses the oldest media ( if available ) in the folder to determine the sorting order, which is not what I wanted. Therefore I developed an extension that sorts directories purely based on their last modification date.

Important

For sorting by a directory's "last modification date", the extension uses the directory's mtime, making it behave just like ls -ltr on Linux.

Installation

There are two ways to install the extension.

Install manually

1. Goto the release page and download sort-dir-lastmod.zip.
2. Extract the files into the sort-dir-lastmod directory.
3. Put the sort-dir-lastmod directory under the <path to the extension folder>, as mentioned in the README of pigallery2 Extension.
   • If you're using docker to run pigallery2, <path to the extension folder> is config/extensions ( note the 's' at the end ! )
4. Goto the settings page in pigallery2 -> Extensions section, and make sure the extension is installed and enabled.

Install via pigallery2

1. Goto the settings page in pigallery2 -> Extensions section.
2. Edit the Repository url field into:

https://gist.githubusercontent.com/bruce30262/bbf39d12f058764014fe29e86cb0c56e/raw/pigallery2_extensions_repo.md

The gist is a markdown file for installing the extension. It has the same format as the one in the pigallery2 repository.

3. You will need to reload the settings page. After that, goto the Extensions section again, and click the Install extensions button.
4. If the Repository url is set correctly, a modal will appear showing the extension "Sort Dir by lastModified". Click Install to add the extension.
5. If all went well, the extension will be installed and enabled automatically.

Usage

1. Enable the "Sort directories by date" option in the settings page.
2. Sort the directories by date. You can compare the results with the output of ls -lrt to see if it's working correctly.

Implementation

Note

This section simply describes how I implemented this extension.

By default, pigallery2 sorts directories by date using the following logic ( ref ):

c.directories.sort(
    (a, b) => (a.cache.oldestMedia || a.lastModified) - (b.cache.oldestMedia || b.lastModified)
);

As you can see, to sort directories purely by lastModified, cache.oldestMedia needs to be set to null -- which is one of the things this extension does.

However, lastModified in pigallery2 is calculated as max(ctime, mtime) ( ref ). This causes the sorting to behave more like ls -lcrt, which didn't suit me needs. To achieve the desired behavior, the extension overwrites lastModified with the directory's mtime.

With these changes, the final behavior effectively matches ls -lrt.

Acknowledgements

• bpatrik, the author of pigallery2, for creating the extension feature and providing advice and guidance on developing this extension.
• Claude and ChatGPT for helping me write code and documentation 😬.

References

• pigallery2/extension
• Issue #751 in pigallery2