xbBooks is an xbCulture family component for cataloguing books you have read and reviews of them. Version 1.1.1.2 is the current release. 

It started out as I needed something to replace a local flat-file database I had been using to save details of books I read and short reviews/comments. Previous to that I had been using a simple spreadsheet and originally an paper file.

xbBooks is installed as a package containing two components - com_xbboos and a supporting component, com_xbpeople, for administration of people and characters which are common to all xbCulture components.

The primary intended user is someone wanting to keep a record of books they have read with a reminder of the plot and what their reaction was.

Documentation  Demo Pages

xbBooks provides views into a relational database of books, people, characters and reviews. Front-end views are provided for lists of books, people & characters, a blog of book reviews, and individual views of single items.

A book may have more than one review, although for personal use you will probably mostly have one review per book. This does allow you to have two or more reviewers adding their own ratings and comments. At its simplest a review consists of just a star rating from 1 to 7 (see here for reasons why 7 is used). There is an option to allow zero stars for books so bad that you threw them away without finishing them.

A person or character may be associated with several books, and have different roles (eg as editor, author or simply appear in someone else's book). They may also appear in films or as performers in xbGigs, To provide shared facilities and code a separate back-end admin component is provided which is common to all xbCulture components.

Standard Joomla tagging and category facilities are provided - the display of tags and categories on the front end is optional. By default two categories are created - uncategorised and imported. Categories for people and characters are shared across xbCulture by the xbPeople component. In addition there is a fiction/non-fiction virtual category which applies to all books.

Data management facilities include the import and export of data in SQL or CSV format. There is a small built in sample dataset which can be installed for test purposes and removed when no longer required.

For further information see the xbBooks Documentation page

Roadmap

Planned

 v1.2

• rework site blog view
• rework data manager
• refresh sample data

 Future ideas

• Joomla 4 compatibility - only when required by paying client

• ability to specify rating scale limits (allow 5 or 10 star systems)

• front-end editing and creation of reviews

• add field for historical period for fiction books

... suggest your own ideas on GitHub

Changelog - click here