Script to Generate Stanza Online Catalog for your Iphone/Touch

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by CrazyIvan

Here you go Bob:

http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/de...lute_urls.php3

Ok... let me clarify. I know what a relative path is. I just don't know where this is expected to happen. When I look at the source all the paths appear to be relative. What are you seeing that is not working? Everything seems to be working fine for me at this point. (as long as I run the server from the command line.)

BOb

[kovidgoyal]

Right now the entries in the stanza feed have URL lihe http://somehostname/path/to/epub/file

For this to work the user has to specify a hostname that his iphone can resolve. I was hoping that instead URLs like
/path/to/epub/file would work, in which case the iphone should automatically use whatever IP address the user used to get the feed in the first place as the host.

[jakewalk]

Hi,

Crazy, thanks for the complements for pdaConverter.

Sadly for my router there is no modified I know of. (At least Tomato and DD-WRT don't support it). But in the meantime I was able to mainly solve my network problems. It had to do with a wireless AP I use to connect my Linux XBOX to the network.

So basically it works, but the server acts strange and I think I found the problem. I have exactly the same behaviour that tHeFiRsTiDioT described.

I cannot ping my PC using the hostname, when I started the server with the command server-calibre --hostname=jakewalk and add http://jakewalk:8080/stanza to stanza's online catalog it doesn't work, but starting the server without any parameter and using the IP for the catalog seems to work: http://192.168.2.79:8080/stanza
But when I try to download a book it doesn't work (see attached IMG_0002.jpg). Then I looked at the XML file and it is apparently not correct:

<entry>
<title>Urteil</title>
<id>urn:calibre:7</id>
<author><name>Kafka</name></author>
<updated>2008-11-13T09:43:51+00:00</updated>
<link type="application/epub+zip" href="http://localhost:8080/get/epub/7"/>
<link rel="x-stanza-cover-image" type="image/jpeg" href="http://localhost:8080/get/cover/7"/>
<link rel="x-stanza-cover-image-thumbnail" type="image/jpeg" href="http://localhost:8080/get/thumb/7"/>
<content type="xhtml">
<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><pre></pre></div>
</content>
</entry>

So I tried to manually download the epub file through Stanza's Option "Download Book at URL" (hidden in the settings) and I could succesfully import the file through the URL http://192.168.2.79:8080/get/epub/Das%20Urteil_6.epub (see attached IMG_0003.jpg) That's the prove that the network connection is not part of the problem.

I think the solution is simple. Could you please add a server parameter to the calibre-server.exe that allows using the IP-address in the XML-output instead of localhost? That should fix the problem.

[tHeFiRsTiDioT]

Jakewalk has posted exactly the same problem I have - wont paste the feed here then.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by jakewalk

I think the solution is simple. Could you please add a server parameter to the calibre-server.exe that allows using the IP-address in the XML-output instead of localhost? That should fix the problem.

I'm curious have you tried to specify your IP address to the hostname parameter?

BOb

[jakewalk]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I'm curious have you tried to specify your IP address to the hostname parameter?

Yes, that was my first idea, too. But it didn't work.

[RoninTech]

That's what I figured was your issue jakewalk. This all stems from not having your networks setup to support hostnames. If you cannot ping every other network device via its hostname then its not setup correctly. Sure you can get by without having this setup but things like running servers becomes much more problematic when you don't.

This is a large problem domain so ideally if you know someone who understands this stuff maybe talk to them for pointers. Google is also your buddy here. If your still stuck then you'll need to explain how your network is setup i.e. what mechanism you use to provide IP addresses to network devices, how you think your setting up hostnames etc.

These days I believe all of the off the shelf routers/access points/firewalls that can serve DHCP can provide a hostname and update a local dns server on the router to handle local network hostname to IP address resolution.

P.S. Jake you should be trying "http://192.168.2.79:8080/get/epub/7" from stanza. Use a browser to confirm your URL's. Can you see the book cover image at "http://192.168.2.79:8080/get/cover/7" in safari on your iphone? I'm suprised that using the IP address passed in as the server hostname doesn't work. When you pass in the IP to calibre-server are you saying that you don't see the IP in the XML source if you browse to it?

[jakewalk]

Crazy, I am sure you are right an I will have to investigate that network problem. For the moment I solved the problem by adding my IP to the iPhone's host-file (/etc/hosts). Now it works and that's really cool. Thanks for your support here!

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by CrazyIvan

These days I believe all of the off the shelf routers/access points/firewalls that can serve DHCP can provide a hostname and update a local dns server on the router to handle local network hostname to IP address resolution.

Both of my routers provide a DHCP server. But, neither of them actually contain a DNS server. What router do you have that is also a DNS server?

BOb

[RoninTech]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Both of my routers provide a DHCP server. But, neither of them actually contain a DNS server. What router do you have that is also a DNS server?

BOb

Hey Bob,

There's DNS server's and then there's DNS servers.

Have a read up on dns caching and dnsmasq. The way it works is that your off the shelf router keeps track of DNS queries it has made and keeps them in a local DNS cache. Whenever it doles out a an IP address and hostname to a machine on the LAN its managing via DHCP it adds an ip/hostname entry to its DNS cache. If you look on the machine that received the IP address and do an ipconfig /all (on windows at least) you'll see that the DNS server address matches the DHCP server address which is your off the shelf router/AP/firewall's IP. What happens is that your PC will query the local "DNS server", the router/AP/firewall just queries its local cache and responds if it gets a hit otherwise it forwards the query to your ISP's full blown dns server.

Hope that helps.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by CrazyIvan

There's DNS server's and then there's DNS servers.

What happens is that your PC will query the local "DNS server", the router/AP/firewall just queries its local cache and responds if it gets a hit otherwise it forwards the query to your ISP's full blown dns server.

Hope that helps.

My understanding is that the "DNS" server in my router is nothing of the kind but basically forwards the DNS request to the ISPs DNS server. So, I am not getting this local DNS feature that you talk of. Also, I know that some DHCP requests don't provide the hostname to the router. I can see this when I look at the DHCP table on my router.

Once again, I do understand IP and networking. I was a Novell CNE (lapsed) and the IP test is one of the elective exams that I chose and passed.

My point is, I was not aware that any home routers actually acted as a true DNS server and where basically just pass thru shells. Also, it seems many home routers just reply to the DHCP request with the ISP DNS server addresses directly rather than have it's own pass thru service.

I'm not say I don't believe you that there are some routers that do true DNS services but I have yet to own one. So do you know of specific brands and models that do do this? I know for my router in the stepup web server the DNS page basically only allows you to set specific DNS server IPs or to get the DNS addresses from the ISPs DHCP server and there is no facility to maintain a manual DNS routing table.

Thanks,
BOb

[kovidgoyal]

@jakewalk: You should be able to pass the IP address as --hostname to the server. For example is you use --hostname 2.3.4.5 your links in the feed will look like http://2.3.4.5:8080/get/epub/594

[Hadrien]

Relative paths work fine in Stanza catalog's system.

For the covers I believe that they follow the same rules than Mobipocket with OPF 2.0: http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/articl...over.htm#IDPF2

You might modify the way EPUB are generated based on this.

[RoninTech]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

Relative paths work fine in Stanza catalog's system.

Strange. I'll take another look tonight. I basically changed the thumb, cover and epub URL's for a book's entry from:

"http://mydomain.com/ebooks/author/book..."

to:

"ebooks/author/book..."

The first one worked fine when viewed via the online catalog. The second one would not let me see the images or book.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by CrazyIvan

Strange. I'll take another look tonight. I basically changed the thumb, cover and epub URL's for a book's entry from:

"http://mydomain.com/ebooks/author/book..."

to:

"ebooks/author/book..."

The first one worked fine when viewed via the online catalog. The second one would not let me see the images or book.

try /ebooks/author/book