Support full-text search, maybe as an optional plugin

[berb]

What's Your Idea?

Add support for full-text search (FTS) as a feature for Grimmory. I understand that this is relatively storage and compute heavy feature, so this should be optional. I currently see two resonable paths to go there:

1. Support FTS as a core feature that is disabled by default and must be enabled if wanted. Or…
2. Add an internal plugin API that allows a non-core FTS plugin. In this case, the required plugin API needs (1) an event-based notification mechanism for the plugin to indicate relevant library events (new book added, book moved, book deleted etc.) as well as a generic UI interface in which the plugin can provide a user-facing search prompt and result list.

Why Would This Be Helpful?

I understand that for some users FTS is an irrelevant feature, e.g., if you only want to read comics in the web application. Other users (I would include myself here) use a personal online book library to manage non-fiction, technical books and academic material. Here it is a prime feature to be able to search inside the books and not just in their meta data.

Anything Else? (Optional)

• I would assume that an internal plugin API is a good idea anyway, so this might even be helpful when FTS would eventually become an optional core feature.
• I want to point out that such an API is different from an external API for third-party client applications (e.g., mobile applications, alternative web frontends etc.)

Want to Help Out?

Yes! I'd love to help implement this

Have You Considered Any Alternatives? (Optional)

I am currently employing an independent tool that is indexing the physical location of the books, thus enabling full-text search. However, as this is entirely decoupled from this web application, the only reference between the two is the filename.

Before Submitting

• I've searched existing issues and confirmed this feature hasn't been requested yet

[DerekLTW]

Wondering what's the alternative tool you use? I also have this issue.

[berb]

recoll with an indexing cronjob on the Grimmory book location root folder and recoll-webui for web-based searching. As there is no further integration, I simply get the PDF file paths of matching books.