Favourites: let readers keep a shortlist Pro

On a library of any size, "I know it is in here somewhere" is the problem. Favourites lets a signed-in reader star the documents they care about and read them back off one page.

There is no setting to find. With Pro active, a signed-in reader gets a star on each document row they can see: clicking it saves, clicking again unsaves. The star is rendered in the state it is already in, so a page of a hundred rows still draws in a single request.

The shortlist page

Put the shortcode on any page:

[filedeck_my_favourites]

Each reader sees their own list and nobody else’s. You can change what an empty list says:

[filedeck_my_favourites empty_message="Star a document to keep it here."]

Signed-in readers only

A visitor who is not logged in gets no star, and the shortlist page asks them to log in.

This is deliberate. Remembering an anonymous visitor’s favourites would mean either a cookie carrying a list of document IDs on every request, or a server-side record tied to a visitor we have gone out of our way not to identify. Both are tracking decisions dressed up as a convenience, and neither is one we want to make quietly on your behalf. A star that could not remember anything would be worse than no star, so there isn’t one.

If your library is public and you want favourites, the readers who use them need accounts.

Access is re-checked when the list is read

A document favourited last month may have been restricted since. FileDeck does not trust the saved list. Each entry is re-checked against the access rules that apply now, to the reader looking at it, and anything they can no longer see is left out. <!– claim-ok: verified by the integration suite — "SECURITY: a favourite they have since lost access to leaves the list" –>

The same goes the other way. Starring is not a way to find out what exists: a document a reader cannot see answers a favourite request exactly as a document that was never there does. <!– claim-ok: verified by the integration suite — "SECURITY: with the same answer as one that does not exist" –>

Deleting a document clears it from every reader’s list, so it cannot linger as a gap or reappear if the ID is later reused. <!– claim-ok: verified by the integration suite — "deleting a document clears it from favourites" –>

Limits

• One reader can keep up to 500 favourites. Past that the star reports that the list is full rather than growing without bound.
• Favourites are per site, not per library — a document starred in one library is starred everywhere it appears.

Styling

The star is a <button class="fdk-fav">; a saved one also carries is-on, and its row carries fdk-favourited. Both are ordinary classes you can restyle in your theme.