Jump to Year/Decade when Sorting by Release Date

[biggcriz 7]

I would love to be able to jump to a year when I have my movie titles sorted by release date. When the movies are sorted by title I can click on a letter or type in the first three letters to jump down the list, however when I sort by release date and I'm in the mood for an 80s movie I have to scroll through 30+ years of movies to get to those releases. If the years (or even decades) were down the right hand side of the screen like the letters are when you sort by title that would be huge. I apologize in advance if there is a way to do this or if its already been requested I've been trying to find a quick way to do this and I can't seem to find one.

[d00zah 149]

An equivalent of the alpha-picker showing year (or even decade) would be great when sorted by release date, but in the interim, have you tried filtering by year? Too many clicks for my taste, but it narrows things down quickly(-ish)..

[Luke 42077]

6 minutes ago, d00zah said:

An equivalent of the alpha-picker showing year (or even decade) would be great when sorted by release date, but in the interim, have you tried filtering by year? Too many clicks for my taste, but it narrows things down quickly(-ish)..

Yes i think this would make the most sense.

[d00zah 149]

14 minutes ago, Luke said:

Yes i think this would make the most sense.

For the sake of clarity... "An equivalent of the alpha-picker" as proposed by the OP, or the interim "filter by date"? The current options could use some refining... IMO.

[Luke 42077]

Well we have filtering by years already, we just need to support multi-select with it. But something that is equivalent to the alpha picker i think would be useful.

[d00zah 149]

20 minutes ago, Luke said:

Well we have filtering by years already, we just need to support multi-select with it. But something that is equivalent to the alpha picker i think would be useful.

I was just looking at the 'sort by' options & a case could be made for each 'sort by' category to have an appropriate 'jump list' like the 'alpha-picker'. It would certainly streamline navigation.

Edited July 1, 2020 by d00zah

[biggcriz 7]

1 hour ago, d00zah said:

have you tried filtering by year

Yes I have used the filters a little bit but I agree it gets a little tedious to reset the filter after looking through the individual year

 

43 minutes ago, Luke said:

Well we have filtering by years already, we just need to support multi-select with it. But something that is equivalent to the alpha picker i think would be useful.

An equivalent to the alpha picker would be clutch but even the ability to multi-select or possibly even a limiter for start and end year would be fantastic for usability

[arrbee99 1815]

A decade picker sounds great, preferably together with a decades filter - https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/81378-filter-by-decade/

Edited July 26, 2020 by arrbee99

[Tremas 197]

Bumping - would love to have this.

[d00zah 149]

~4 yrs gone & little has changed. Just looked at sorting movies by year (or release date) & w/ out a jump list (a la alpha picker), navigating a sizeable movie library is quite tedious scrolling down the list. Yes, there may be filters available (slightly less tedious, year, no decade), but they must be cleared/reset next time one views the library w/ a different intent. Is it truly that difficult to implement?

[rbjtech 5284]

On 02/06/2024 at 16:35, d00zah said:

~4 yrs gone & little has changed. Just looked at sorting movies by year (or release date) & w/ out a jump list (a la alpha picker), navigating a sizeable movie library is quite tedious scrolling down the list. Yes, there may be filters available (slightly less tedious, year, no decade), but they must be cleared/reset next time one views the library w/ a different intent. Is it truly that difficult to implement?

Have to agree - really not sure why this has taken so long to implement.   People simply like to look for movies by 'generation or decade'.

I added my own code (took about 5 minutes) to the mediaInfo plugin to tag each movie with a 'decade' tag - now at least I can filter by decade - but it would have been nice to simply use the 'Sort by Year' with an 'decade picker' on the side to jump to the pre-filtered items.

I'm sure the coding guru's would have this done in a few lines (I'm not a dev..) - but this is all I added to create the basic functionality as tags ..

...
  
string getyearstring = DateTime.Parse(item.PremiereDate.ToString()).Year.ToString();

getyearint = Int16.Parse(getyearstring);

if (getyearint > 1929 && getyearint < 1940)
{
    Log.Debug("Writing Tag Decade = #1930's : Actual Year = {0}", getyearint);
    decade = "#1930's";
    tempList.Add(new LinkedItemInfo
    {
        Name = "#1930's"
    });

}

if (getyearint > 1939 && getyearint < 1950)
{
    Log.Debug("Writing Tag Decade = #1940's : Actual Year = {0}", getyearint);
    decade = "#1940's";
    tempList.Add(new LinkedItemInfo
    {
        Name = "#1940's"
    });

}

if (getyearint > 1949 && getyearint < 1960)
{
    Log.Debug("Writing Tag Decade = #1950's : Actual Year = {0}", getyearint);
    decade = "#1950's";
    tempList.Add(new LinkedItemInfo
    {
        Name = "#1950's"
    });

}

if (getyearint > 1959 && getyearint < 1970)
{
    Log.Debug("Writing Tag Decade = #1960's : Actual Year = {0}", getyearint);
    decade = "#1960's";
    tempList.Add(new LinkedItemInfo
    {
        Name = "#1960's"
    });

}

if (getyearint > 1969 && getyearint < 1980)
{
    Log.Debug("Writing Tag Decade = #1970's : Actual Year = {0}", getyearint);
    decade = "#1970's";
    tempList.Add(new LinkedItemInfo
    {
        Name = "#1970's"
    });

}

if (getyearint > 1979 && getyearint < 1990)
{
    Log.Debug("Writing Tag Decade = #1980's : Actual Year = {0}", getyearint);
    decade = "#1980's";
    tempList.Add(new LinkedItemInfo
    {
        Name = "#1980's"
    });

}

if (getyearint > 1989 && getyearint < 2000)
{
    Log.Debug("Writing Tag Decade = #1990's : Actual Year = {0}", getyearint);
    decade = "#1990's";
    tempList.Add(new LinkedItemInfo
    {
        Name = "#1990's"
    });

}

if (getyearint > 1999 && getyearint < 2010)
{
    Log.Debug("Writing Tag Decade = #2000's : Actual Year = {0}", getyearint);
    decade = "#2000's";
    tempList.Add(new LinkedItemInfo
    {
        Name = "#2000's"
    });

}

if (getyearint > 2009 && getyearint < 2020)
{
    Log.Debug("Writing Tag Decade = #2010's : Actual Year = {0}", getyearint);
    decade = "#2010's";
    tempList.Add(new LinkedItemInfo
    {
        Name = "#2010's"
    });

}

if (getyearint > 2019 && getyearint < 2030)
{
    Log.Debug("Writing Tag Decade = #2020's : Actual Year = {0}", getyearint);
    decade = "#2020's";
    tempList.Add(new LinkedItemInfo
    {
        Name = "#2020's"
    });

}

if (getyearint > 2029 && getyearint < 2040)
{
    Log.Debug("Writing Tag Decade = #2030's : Actual Year = {0}", getyearint);
    decade = "#2030's";
    tempList.Add(new LinkedItemInfo
    {
        Name = "#2030's"
    });

 

 

Edited June 4, 2024 by rbjtech

[arrbee99 1815]

1 hour ago, rbjtech said:

Have to agree - really not sure why this has taken so long to implement.  

 

Just the same as so many other things. However, any chance of that MediaInfo light version thingy that just does tags such as this please please please...

[ebr 16169]

Creating something like tags for content is very different than generating a "picker" from a variable list of items with that picker being a piece of data that doesn't currently exist in those items.

Its not super duper hard but certainly not simple and it requires changes at both the server and all apps level.

[arrbee99 1815]

4 minutes ago, ebr said:

Creating something like tags for content is very different than generating a "picker" from a variable list of items with that picker being a piece of data that doesn't currently exist in those items.

Its not super duper hard but certainly not simple and it requires changes at both the server and all apps level.

Sorry, confused (as usual) but movies have dates I presume. You can find and display movies for say 1943, why can't it be done to display say the '40s ?

[arrbee99 1815]

You can also pick several years, like all those from the '40s individually and show them, but...

[ebr 16169]

1 minute ago, arrbee99 said:

You can find and display movies for say 1943, why can't it be done to display say the '40s ?

First of all, that's not what this request is asking for...

 

[arrbee99 1815]

Desperately tries to think of a response to that...

Hmm...the OP wouldn't need to jump to a year, they could just filter to 40's and browse around there.

And its still a 4 year old request, like filter by decade is.

[d00zah 149]

18 minutes ago, ebr said:

....

Its not super duper hard but certainly not simple and it requires changes at both the server and all apps level.

One would think that over the course of 4 yrs & scores of releases, said changes could have been quietly/incrementally introduced, even if not enabled all at once?

[ebr 16169]

26 minutes ago, d00zah said:

One would think that over the course of 4 yrs & scores of releases, said changes could have been quietly/incrementally introduced, even if not enabled all at once?

The same can be said about multiple hundreds of pieces of work - many of which have been done.

 

Here's what would have to happen to make this request a reality:

First - the concept of a "decade" has to be introduced to the system.  It currently doesn't exist.  This could potentially be done "on the fly" using the existing dates but that would be very inefficient and just not a good way to do it - especially taking database operations into account.  There is also the question of exactly which date(s) but I'll set that aside.

So, we probably have to create a new attribute on every item that is "decade".  Then, that information has to be kept up to date every time the date changes.  At this point the "filter by decade" request becomes pretty trivial - but not this one yet.

Now there has to be a server routine that can look at a specific result set and determine exactly which decades exist in that set of data.  This has to be done on the fly, every time because each result set can be influenced by parental and access controls, filters, etc.  This routine has to interrogate all the items in the result and assemble a list of possible decades.  There needs to be a specific API built so that each client app can request and obtain this list of possibilities for a given result set.  This is something we do now for letters but not for decades, because, again,  those don't even exist as even a concept at this time.

Now each app has to be modified to use the above API in the proper instance in order to generate and show a "picker" list.

Now there needs to be additional work on the server side and another API (or modification of an existing one) that will take an input of a decade and determine exactly where (again in a very specific result set) the first item with that decade is.

Then each app has to be able to use that new (or modified) API to get that value and then can jump to that particular position in the given result set.

Is any of that super hard?  No but it isn't something that happens in a few minutes by changing a few lines of code.  The design, implementation, testing, etc. touches the entire system including the server and all the different apps.

This request has 6 likes.  So, no, all of the above work has not yet been undertaken to make it happen yet.  I'm pretty confident it will at some point but it hasn't happened yet.

[arrbee99 1815]

That all sounds reasonable to me, and things are invariably more complicated than us just saying 'can't you just do this', but I still imagine people will still be asking about this (and filter by decade) in a years time, and another year after that...just like for nextgen TV (or TVnext...) or that watch together thing, or...

[arrbee99 1815]

I also would have no objection to seeing how well (or not) the on the fly decades thing goes in practice.

[Luke 42077]

And then there is also the layout impact. Current layouts are not factoring in that the a-z jump picker might have a width of more than one character. So add that to the list.

[arrbee99 1815]

True. But there's always a way and we could have filter by decade in the meantime.

[rbjtech 5284]

9 hours ago, ebr said:

The same can be said about multiple hundreds of pieces of work - many of which have been done.

 

Here's what would have to happen to make this request a reality:

First - the concept of a "decade" has to be introduced to the system.  It currently doesn't exist.  This could potentially be done "on the fly" using the existing dates but that would be very inefficient and just not a good way to do it - especially taking database operations into account.  There is also the question of exactly which date(s) but I'll set that aside.

So, we probably have to create a new attribute on every item that is "decade".  Then, that information has to be kept up to date every time the date changes.  At this point the "filter by decade" request becomes pretty trivial - but not this one yet.

Now there has to be a server routine that can look at a specific result set and determine exactly which decades exist in that set of data.  This has to be done on the fly, every time because each result set can be influenced by parental and access controls, filters, etc.  This routine has to interrogate all the items in the result and assemble a list of possible decades.  There needs to be a specific API built so that each client app can request and obtain this list of possibilities for a given result set.  This is something we do now for letters but not for decades, because, again,  those don't even exist as even a concept at this time.

Now each app has to be modified to use the above API in the proper instance in order to generate and show a "picker" list.

Now there needs to be additional work on the server side and another API (or modification of an existing one) that will take an input of a decade and determine exactly where (again in a very specific result set) the first item with that decade is.

Then each app has to be able to use that new (or modified) API to get that value and then can jump to that particular position in the given result set.

Is any of that super hard?  No but it isn't something that happens in a few minutes by changing a few lines of code.  The design, implementation, testing, etc. touches the entire system including the server and all the different apps.

This request has 6 likes.  So, no, all of the above work has not yet been undertaken to make it happen yet.  I'm pretty confident it will at some point but it hasn't happened yet.

Thanks for taking the time to list what would be needed - I'm aware it's not as easy as just adding grouping data - but on the entire concept of the 'Sort By' is flawed in Emby - because you have no way of knowing where one 'group' starts and another ends.    The only grouping that 'works' is by Title - with the a-z picker.

As examples - sort by 'IMDb Rating' - I'm assuming 10 is first, 1 is last.    Let me find IMDb rating of 8 ... I have no clue.    How about Runtime - I've got less than 2 hrs to watch a short film,  listed shortest to longest by the looks of it - but 'grouping' to the nearest 30 mins as a picker would be 'useful' otherwise it's useless because the data I want is 'somewhere in the middle' but I've no idea where it is.    Year/dates etc is an obvious one and what this topic is about.  Needs to apply to all the dates - Release, Added etc.

So just presenting a list of 'sortable' items is actually of limited use - with a medium to large collection - you NEED a way to skip to the group of items that you are interested in to then refine your search manually.

[ebr 16169]

5 hours ago, rbjtech said:

So just presenting a list of 'sortable' items is actually of limited use - with a medium to large collection - you NEED a way to skip to the group of items that you are interested in to then refine your search manually.

I don't think this request is the best way to solve that problem actually.  There is a request out here to show the field that the list is sorted by which would solve your actual issue there (you don't know what the sort value is for any particular item).

14 hours ago, arrbee99 said:

but I still imagine people will still be asking about this (and filter by decade) in a years time

Yes, I imagine those six people will.  And then another six will be asking about another set of features.  And then...  Every individual has a cross-section of features that they believe are the highest priority.  We have no choice but to prioritize on a higher level than that and look at features that impact the most people (and then also weigh that against usability and complexity).  That list will almost never match any particular person's individual list exactly but it will match the most people's generally.