- milestone: --> Gallery 2
- summary: Virtual Album --> [G2] Virtual Album
Problem:
Having a big collection of photos, "dumped" chronological into folders. Wanting to create some different albums for different audiences, or with different themes, e.g. holidays, children, specific persons, locations, etc out of the same items pool.
Current solution:
Use keyword or tag albums. Create a Link Item and paste the keyword search string into the destination link. Upload a suitable thumb for it.
Drawback / missing functionalities:
Limited to predefined keywords / tags. Not possible to search e.g. for EXIF dates or define which albums should be searched. Need to upload thumb. Can not search in protected albums (e.g. the searched contents should be available for guests, but the searched album is protected, only keyword matching photos should be available). Search string not so nice to maintain, must edit url. Albums clearly identifyable as keyword album.
Suggestion:
Introduce a new album type, lets call it "Virtual Album". (Selection of real or virtual album with tabs under the "create album" option)
It appears as a normal album to the viewer, but consists only of search results from real, "physical" albums. E.g. it is kind of improved frontend for the existing keyword / tag system. It has most of the properties of a normal album, but has no real own photos / items, only powerful search capabilities, using current tags, keywords, etc:
- EXIF and posting dates of photos
- Keywords, tags, title, item file names (with wildcards), file type
- Includes or excludes albums to search
- matches can trigger inclusion or exclusion photos, conditions can be AND and OR
E.g. more or less all data we have in the database about an item (reading EXIF of all photos might take too long, I am not sure which EXIF (and other) data are in the database, maybe copy the most important ones to the db)
The Virtual Album should have a User ID (or Group ID?) to get access to protected albums just as a normal user. This would make it possible to create a Virtual Album for guests and show selected items of otherwise protected albums.
E.g. the Virtual Album inherits the access rights of the creator, creates an album with a subset of the protected albums and offers it with to viewers with lower access rights, e.g guests.
The Virtual Album has also a normal individual title, description, etc, unlike the current keyword album.