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trying · 10-15-2013, 10:34 PM

Is there any way to programmatically add to your Reading Lists via an external prgram (on Windows 7 64 bit)?

I am trying to "Flag" certain books for later reading based on an external list of filenames I maintain with another program. It seems like your Reading Lists might offer the easiest approach? It lets me update the "tags" column and use "Flagged" as the "Value in column to add/remove".

I'm very familiar with Python and don't mind writing something to accomplish this. Alternatively maybe there is a completely different approach that will allow me to set calibre library tags or Category from a list of original filenames that have already been added to calibre. Or maybe I have to add my tags before adding the ebooks to calibre?

Background info:

I looked at the various calibre Command Line Interface programs but none of them seems to fit my needs.

ebook-meta would let me set the tags ebook metadata of an external, unarchived file but it wasn't possible to just add a tag --- you can only replace all the tags. This means I'd have to first find out the current tags by parsing the ebook-meta output and then run it again adding the tag I wanted. I'd then still need to re-add that external ebook to calibre.

calibredb has similar issues. You first have to find the id of the ebook you want to change via the list --search option, use show_metadata, parse the output to figure out the current tags, then use set_metadata to add your new tag. Seems a bit painful. It would be nice if there were an update command that lets you specify a search string to find matching books and then adds/removes tags.

10-15-2013, 10:34 PM	#588
trying Member Posts: 21 Karma: 104 Join Date: Oct 2013 Device: none	Is there any way to programmatically add to your Reading Lists via an external prgram (on Windows 7 64 bit)? I am trying to "Flag" certain books for later reading based on an external list of filenames I maintain with another program. It seems like your Reading Lists might offer the easiest approach? It lets me update the "tags" column and use "Flagged" as the "Value in column to add/remove". I'm very familiar with Python and don't mind writing something to accomplish this. Alternatively maybe there is a completely different approach that will allow me to set calibre library tags or Category from a list of original filenames that have already been added to calibre. Or maybe I have to add my tags before adding the ebooks to calibre? Background info: I looked at the various calibre Command Line Interface programs but none of them seems to fit my needs. ebook-meta would let me set the tags ebook metadata of an *external, unarchived file but it wasn't possible to just add* a tag --- you can only replace all the tags. This means I'd have to first find out the current tags by parsing the ebook-meta output and then run it again adding the tag I wanted. I'd then still need to re-add that external ebook to calibre. calibredb has similar issues. You first have to find the id of the ebook you want to change via the list --search option, use show_metadata, parse the output to figure out the current tags, then use set_metadata to add your new tag. Seems a bit painful. It would be nice if there were an update command that lets you specify a search string to find matching books and then adds/removes tags.