Folder Support Needed

[dscott]

I know this has come up before, but just wanted to ask about it
again...

We could really use a few API functions for even the most basic folder
support... mainly for accessing documents by folder (even if managing
folders was done directly in Scribd for now). We don't necessarily
need full folder support (e.g. creating/deleting etc.) immediately,
but we could really use just a couple of method enhancements now,
something like:

1) docs.getFolders
To return a list of folder names currently existing in a Scribd
account.

2) folder_name
As an input parameter for docs.getList and especially docs.search.

What do you think?

Thanks,
Daryl

P.S. After this, adding a folder_name input/output parameter to
docs.getSettings and docs.changeSettings would be nice, too!

[Jared Friedman]

Hey Daryl,

Just wondering ... how are you using folders in your app?

Jared

[dscott]

Users of our app are connected to a doc store on Scribd via the API.

Since Scribd directly allows folders (a good thing), users naturally
create them to organize their uploaded docs (which are mostly
private) in Scribd.

What they'd like to do is be able to view in our app:
- all docs (or a doc list matching a specific search)
- only docs in a specific folder (all docs in the folder or a searched
group out of the folder)

So, the UI from our end would be a search box that also had an
accompanying folder pick list (including an "all folders" selection).
Hence the method enhancements that I mentioned: let me get a list of
folders to display, and then be able to restrict searches to that
folder as an additional docs.search parameter.

The only workaround now is to make users manually use unique tags and
maybe use the advanced search syntax to get the matching docs -- but
this is a little geeky for most users, and prone to error if they
forget/mis-type some unique tag identifier. Plus, since Scribd has
folders, users expect that our app should support them -- but we can't
with the current API.

Hope you can get this in, as it seems to be a big request from users!

Thanks,
Daryl


P.S. BTW, as I mentioned, the users of our app are uploading nearly
all of their docs as "private" -- so (while I'm asking :-) ), it would
also be really great if the Scribd account settings allowed for a
"public" or "private" default upload setting for an account. Right now
it defaults to "public" which is a concern for some of our users,
since they worry that they may accidentally leak something that they
meant to upload as private...