briancherin / google-play-books-highlights-quiz Goto Github PK

This ReactJS web app is a way to encourage a sentimental e-book lover to look back at their highlights and notes, in the format of a quiz.

The quiz presents the user with a book quote that they highlighted, and challenges them to identify which book title it originates from.

Features:

• Easy import of highlights and notes from Google Play Books. Import is only required the first time the app is loaded.
• Displays any notes the user took for that highlight, the matching highlight color, and the date the highlight was made.
• Each quote includes a link to the exact location of the quote in the e-book in Google Play Books.
• Ability to "favorite" a quote to keep track of quotes you want to save and look back at later.
• "Browse" mode that presents all highlights and notes in a clean UI, grouped by book title.

Quiz:

Importing highlights from Google Drive:

Highlights Browser:

Google Play Books is an e-book reader with a feature that I enjoy: for each book in your library, it generates a Google doc which contains all of the highlights and notes you made in that particular book. I have always been a heavy e-book highlighter - whenever I read a line that catches my interest, sounds like good life advice to remember, or is something that aligns with my sense of humour, I highlight it and maybe even write a short note.

Normally, once I finish a book, I would have no particular reason to look back at the highlights and notes that I took. But this is sad, since what's the point of highlighting in the first place if I never look back at it? The goal of this highlights quiz is to refresh your mind with your past highlights while engaging in a bit of a challenge. Even just during my time developing this, it has been very satisfying to look back at the lines I've highlighted (and the occasional corresponding notes!).

In order for this application to work, a specific option needs to be activated in the settings page of the Google Play Books mobile application. (At the time of writing this, I don't believe this option is visible on the web version.)

Under settings, there is an option called "Save notes, highlights, and bookmarks in Google Drive". Clicking on this setting opens a text field for a folder name, which is set to the default of "Play Books Notes". For my application, the folder name currently is required to be "Play Books Notes" (the default). A future improvement will be to enable any folder name to be used, and the user will be able to select the specific folder from their Google Drive.