file/folder based backend storage

[radam9]

I read in the roadmap that the feature of file/folder based backend storage is planned for version 1.0.0.

This feature is the most important for me at the moment, so I interested in implementing this feature and am wondering if that is fine with you?

if it is fine, do you have any idea or approach planned for the implementation of this feature? or should we have some sort of discussion about how you want or expect the implementation to be? or should I just implement it and open a PR for a discussion?

Thanks

[enchant97]

At the moment you can add notes to a book/folder, however if you wanted folders in folders that's currently not possible. But as you have mentioned it is planned for a v1 release.

To answer what ideas I had around this. I was going to rewrite the backend to store the files/folders using the file system (removing any need to store this in the database). This however, will require much rework in both frontend and backend.

I currently don't have any timeframe on when I will implement this change.

I'm open to PRs and ideas for implementation.

[radam9]

so after the rewrite you are not planning on supporting both db and filesystem based storage, but rather only the filesystem storage only?

one solution I could think of is to just add support for the filesystem based backend storage alongside the db storage. This can be achieved by creating a storage interface that both the filesystem and db can implement, this could be injected into the service based on flags/environment variables. That way I think it should be theoretically possible to add support for the filesystem based storage without a major rewrite.
Later on you could add the extra functionality little by little or by a rewrite.

what do you think?

[enchant97]

Currently the app stores the notes and assets in the below format, The rest of the metadata is stored in the database.

notes/
    16/
        16e29b6a-4798-4615-b186-a24b046a20ee/
            note.md
            assets/
                fca590d9-dbfc-4b8b-b5b3-1e8359af7e1d.bin

I think it would make the backend a lot simpler to just use the filesystem for the structure. It would also make the import/export utility simpler. With a minor adjustment the export utility can be made to export in this format making migration to the new version possible.

This new format could look something like this:

{username}/
    {folder-slug}/
        {note-slug}.md
        assets/
            {asset-slug}.png
        {folder-slug}/
            {note-slug}.md

The database would then be responsible for storing user authentication stuff and note/folder access permissions.

---

The frontend either way would need to be mostly re-written as it assumes there is only folder->file. I think the frontend could be mostly rewritten to support new system whilst still running the old backend.

[radam9]

I haven't really worked on any framework based frontends before, but I will give it a go and see what I can come up with.