shuffle subdirectories, sort subdirectory contents

[ilveroluca]

Hi,

my collection of pictures is organized in a directory tree which generally follows the structure YEAR / YYYY-MM_event / pictures. I'd like to point picframe at my entire collection and have it show me pictures from random events. That is, I'd like it to shuffle the list of subdirectories, and then show all the pictures in a random event subdirectory before moving on to the next one.

Is it possible to configure picframe to follow this behaviour? From the docs it looks like the shuffle: True configuration will randomize over the entire image collection, which is not what I want.

[paddywwoof]

Hi @ilveroluca, the way the list of image files is generated now doesn't lend itself to doing this in a very natural way. At some point we will probably change the way the random list is created, moving the ranomisation into python and away from sqlite. At that point it might become easier to include behavior like you want.

In the mean time you could achieve the effect you want by hacking the source code. There are disadvantages: this won't work with potrait pairs and will stop the normal selection and sorting from working, you might break something or you might loose your mod later if you upgrade the picframe source to a later version. So make copies of the file before and after changing it. Assuming you have a vanilla installation. In /home/pi/venv_picframe/lib/python3.13/site-packages/picframe/image_cache.py (latest OS, earlier one will be .../python3.11/...) around line 114 comment out the existing two lines for the sql string and put in some lines to make a new table to use as major sort order.

            if not self.__portrait_pairs:  # TODO SQL insertion? Does it matter in this app?
                #sql = """SELECT file_id FROM all_data WHERE {0} ORDER BY {1}
                #    """.format(where_clause, sort_clause)
                sql = "CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE IF NOT EXISTS folderorder (sortorder INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, folder_id)"
                cursor.execute(sql)
                sql = "DELETE FROM folderorder"
                cursor.execute(sql)
                sql = "INSERT INTO folderorder (folder_id) SELECT DISTINCT folder_id FROM folder ORDER BY random()"
                cursor.execute(sql)
                sql = """SELECT file_id FROM file
                            JOIN folderorder
                            ON folderorder.folder_id = file.folder_id
                            ORDER BY folderorder.sortorder, random()
                      """
                return cursor.execute(sql).fetchall()
            else:  # make two SELECTS

Really the CREATE TABLE should be done elsewhere and it doesn't really need to be a temporary TABLE if you're going to use this order all the time! But a scheme like this will probably do what you want.

Paddy

PS that last ORDER BY folderorder.sortorder, random() will make the pictures within the event folder appear in random order. If you want them in name order you would need to replace random() with file.basename

[ilveroluca]

Hi @paddywwoof. Thanks for the detailed reply!

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