Calibre Companion sorting bug

[samoanbiscuit]

Hi! Calibre companion allows grouping by custom columns, and while it groups some, it fails to group others. I use the fanficdownloader plugin to get epubs of arhiveofourown.org, and I use a custom column to record the date the fic was updated. It is stored as an actual date, and Calibre seems to sort it without any problems, but when I tried grouping it by #updated on ccompanion, it just shows a blank screen. Is it that the custom column sorting doesn't support that data type or am I doing something wrong?

[chaley]

CC cannot group by dates. It doesn't make a lot of sense to attempt it as every book will have its own value, leading to a lot of groups with one book inside.

[chaley]

Idea: It might make sense to group by year or by year/month. This would give you groups that contain books within that period. The choice would be made by how many different groups you end up with. Getting too specific with the date will devolve to groups of one book.

If this is something you might want, then create a new custom column 'made from other columns'. Set the type to text. Do not check "Show in tag browser". Set the template to something like

{#updated:format_date(yyyy-MM)}

where the date format is the granularity you want. The above example gives you year-month. You must put the date components in order from most significant (year) to least significant (seconds). Add the lookup name of the new column to CC's group-by

[chaley]

I decided to add grouping date columns using the format "yyyy-MM" to CC. It will be in the next release (in a week or two). This change obviates the need to create the custom column unless you want a different grouping granularity.

Given that one can now group on dates, I also added the possibility of adding calibre's pubdate and date fields to the list of categories to group upon. The lookup names are "pubdate" and "date".

Apologies for all the posts. I have found that "edits" often aren't noticed.

[samoanbiscuit]

Thank you so much for your prompt replies and the thought and effort you put into a solution. I wish you guys all the best with your app, and I'll be sure to promote your Android app to any (admittedly few) Calibre users I know in meatspace.
EDIT: I don't know if it's appropriate to ask another question after the thread has been resolved, but I was wondering, are there any plans for a dark theme for ccompanion? Because when going back from an ebook reader in night mode to ccompanion to choose another book can be quite painful on the eyes in a dark room., all that white is pretty bright.