Bookshelf

A reading tracker that knows whether you are reading, paused or done with a book.

Web In progress

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The Problem

Web-novel readers follow dozens of long series at once. Without a single place to record the chapter they stopped at, books get lost, and a library of hundreds of titles written in Chinese is hard to even browse.

The Solution

I built Bookshelf: a private library where each account only sees its own books, with search, tags and a status for every series. It works out whether a book is being read, paused or dropped from how far behind you are, and imports a whole bookshelf from twkan.com, translated into English.

Personal libraries: a global Eloquent scope isolates each account across the UI, admin panel and API.
Reading statuses (reading, unread, paused, completed, abandoned) inferred from the reading position.
Normalised tags shared between books, with search, filters and sorting.
A Sanctum-secured REST API, plus a browser exporter and artisan importer for twkan.com.

What I Focused On

A library is only useful if adding a book and moving a chapter are quick. The interface stays light, and the clever parts (status inference, import, demo safeguards) stay out of the way.

One Livewire page for the everyday work: search, filter, step through chapters.
Idempotent imports matched on source URL, so re-running updates rather than duplicates.
A shared demo account with row caps, per-IP rate limits and an hourly reset, without touching real accounts.
Built-in Help & Documentation that reads the live configuration.

Outcome

A library of hundreds of books that used to live in browser bookmarks is now searchable in English, with a clear status on every series and an API for anything I want to build on top.