Antennapod: Queue: Keep sorted

[mfietz]

This is a feature request from the Play Store.
My interpretation is that the user doesn't want to sort the queue only once, but that order should be permanent. I guess we have to change the whole sort UI, we probably have to replace the menus with a dialog that has a "permanent" checkbox.
Then, whenever we add something to the queue, we have to sort it (or add the new item at the right position).

[paoloianes]

"we probably have to replace the menus with a dialog that has a "permanent" checkbox"
I totally agree!

[Vrihub]

+1
I like to have items in the queue sorted as "most recent first", but the Queue doesn't seem to recall this setting, so every time I download new episodes I have to change the sorting order manually :(

[mfietz]

@Vrihub if you enable the "Enqueue at Front" setting, the queue should be in the right order more often

[paoloianes]

"if you enable the "Enqueue at Front" setting, the queue should be in the right order more often"
but it doesn't always happens or it is not useful /(e.g. if you want to sort episodes from the oldest to the newest)

[keunes]

And another request on the Google mailing list: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/antennapod/8Yge8-RyS6I/N5pThDjRAgAJ
And another: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/antennapod/WpkZpjMTw44/Hi5GBTSGAwAJ

[colin-young]

What about a third state on the lock indicator? e.g. unlocked, locked, auto-sort. Might need to rework the sort menu a little bit to make it clear that it's connected with the lock icon though.

[pilot51]

I just started using AntennaPod in search of a podcast app with my desired features, and I like to support OSS.

I listen to my podcasts strictly in chronological order and that is the top feature I've been looking for in a podcast app. I had been using a USB drive in my car with the filename of every episode manually prefixed with the date (yyyy-mm-dd_) and metadata removed to force sorting by date, but I was getting tired of that.

I see AntennaPod allows sorting the queue by date, which is a huge improvement over my manual rename method, and disabling the 'Enqueue at Front' option should help as long as the app downloads every day. However, whenever I'm downloading episodes from different days at the same time or manually adding an episode that is dated earlier than the last in the queue, I can't rely on it to keep the order. An auto-sort would eliminate that concern.

[hvhaugwitz]

What is the state of this feature request?

[Friptick]

Of all the issues relating to sorting, in particular #2448, #2833, #1077 (busy but concerns auto-downloads) this one would seem the easiest quick fix, no?

A button to sort the queue makes little sense, since it should not be necessary to sort anything manually. A fixed default sort order for every list, especially this one, is surely the way to go.

[mathstuf]

I still sort things manually (largely to group podcasts I listen to at different rates, see #2612), so a button to apply a sort would still be useful IMO. I also sometimes defer an episode because it requires a quieter setting or discusses a topic I don't want to listen to at the moment (e.g., something medically detailed around mealtime).

[Friptick]

It sometimes seems these issues are intractable, since everyone has a different way of using the same tool.

Here, you want to be able to sort. I want not to have to sort. I just want everything in chronological order, always, everywhere. That's why the padlock system suggested above seems like an acceptable compromise.

PS: Even this will not solve my problem completely, since the episode list is currently anti-chronological and stuck there. Both PocketCasts and Podlisten do exactly what I want but one is commercial spyware and the other buggy and abandoned. Oh well, this is FOSS, we take what we can get.

[damoasda]

I have used AntennaPod for more than one year now and it's a really great tool that does exactly what I need. The only thing that bothers me is that I have to sort the queue every time after downloading new episodes. After I found this feature request which is open for more than three years now, I decided to solve the problem by myself. I implemented an option to automatically sort the queue after every change and I'm very happy with that. If you are interested you can merge my pull request.

Below some details about the changes.

Queue sort configuration

I added a new settings dialog in Settings → User Interface → Set Queue Sort Order where you can choose the sort order:

• Manually
• Date (New → Old)
• Date (Old → New)
• Duration (Short → Long)
• Duration (Long → Short)
• Episode title (A → Z)
• Episode title (Z → A)
• Podcast title (A → Z)
• Podcast title (Z → A)

The default is "Manually" which is exactly the old behavior. If you set it to another value the queue will be sorted automatically in that way.

Queue UI changes

If the sort order is set to "Manually" the UI is unchanged, you can lock and unlock the queue list, sort the episodes manually and also sort them via the menu entry "Sort".

If the sort order is set to another option, which means that the queue is sorted automatically, some elements of the queue UI are hidden or disabled:

• The lock/unlock button is hidden.
• The menu item "Sort" is hidden.
• The queue list is always in locked mode, i.e. the episodes cannot be reordered manually by dragging them up or down.
• The episode context menu doesn't show the entries "Move to top" and "Move to bottom".

Refactoring

Finally, I did some refactorings to avoid duplicate code:

• Refactorings and extensions in the class QueueSorter to support the automatic sort use case.
• The method DBWriter.sortQueue() is deleted due to the more generic method reorderQueue().
• I wrote a unit test QueueSorterTest and extended the helper class TextUtils to make the unit test work without the Android environment.

This is my first time to contribute to a GitHub project. If I could improve my approach or missed something, please let me know.

[damoasda]

I created another pull request (https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/pull/3315) that allows to turn on and off the keep sorted feature in the queue menu. For more details see the pull request description.

The second pull request contains all necessary changes and replaces the first pull request (https://github.com/AntennaPod/AntennaPod/pull/3260).