[GUI Plugin] Goodreads Sync

[nynaevelan]

Thanks for the quick update, I use the updater plugin but I also download it manually because I like to keep backup copies of the various versions, just in case.

Nyn

[Noughty]

The updates are always welcome. I'm sure nobody minds updating often - it isn't hard or time consuming .

I wanted to suggest a little thing. If it isn't too hard to make. Since I just got calibre, I need to add a lot of books. So I do it like 10 or so at a time and fix them up completely with goodreads and all. the problem is that then you link 10 books you need to press enter 10 times. It is the same as linking books one by one. This means that then you are linking you cannot go and do something else.
So, I thought could there be a way to check 10 books, press link - it searches and gives you a table for all 10 books with their matches, if they are correct you just tick it (v) or untick it or something like that. So you would need to approve the found books one time.
Now I sometimes start pressing enter automatically, and then have to go back and undo some badly linked books.

Been adding more books and so far no problems. Shelves works fine . Didn't try the newest update yet

[kiwidude]

Why would you not just select the 10 books and add them to a shelf? (Since I presume that is why you are linking them?) That will give you a grid displaying all 10 of them on, auto-link the ones it can based on ISBN etc.

[Noughty]

They might already be on the shelves. Maybe even read shelf and I wouldn't know which ones I have read. Most of my books are already on Goodreads shelves, only small part isn't yet.

And putting on shelves looks more troublesome for the program, it always becomes unresponsive and is very slow.

And I thought it is better not to abuse the function to put on shelves? or no? After linking I download shelves, then see the ones which aint added and then view them on goodreads and add them on the webpage.

[kiwidude]

I'm not sure what you mean by "more troublesome". The whole point of this plugins integration is to manage relationships between books on a shelf in Goodreads versus those you have in Calibre. If you don't intend to put the book on a shelf of some kind, then there is no real point in linking it with the plugin

However it sounds like you do intend to have them on a shelf, for the ones that are not already on one. In terms of the "slow and unresponsive" comment, I can only assume that you have a very large number of books on that particular shelf you are trying to add them to. In which case yes that will be slow to launch the dialog. What sort of numbers are on the shelf that you find slow to add to? Not that I can do anything about it to speed it up, other than to remove the code which downloads all your shelf contents each time so as to identify which are new books that need adding. However that would be "robbing Peter to pay Paul", because of course unless you were careful to only use this function to add books that did not exist on the shelf you will end up doing more calls.

However, if your starting point is that you have some books already setup on Goodreads on a particular shelf, is there any reason why you chose not to use the "Sync from shelf" functionality, to make sure you had Calibre records for all the books on that shelf that were of interest? You can create empty book records if they are books you do not have as yet and link to books that you do have in Calibre all in the one step?

It did occur to me btw when I originally write the link feature in the menu (which was initially just for my own test purposes until others said they found it useful) that people might want a dialog for multiple selection. However as they already have similar functionality on the Add to Shelf and Sync from Shelf dialogs, it seemed a bit overkill. Obviously if it is something that more people would like to see rather than using those other functions then at some point I can take a look at adding it.

[Noughty]

Ok, I'll try to play with adding to shelf. And the solution for too many books an the shelf, I can split it on goodreads. Add like books_1 and Books_2.

[Noughty]

As far as I understand, syncing works only for the books already linked. So if I sync from my read shelf, the linked books will sync but others won't? Even if there is an exact match on calibre?
So after this syncing I might end up with read books on my to read shelf when I add them to shelf.

If you could explain a little how to make adding to one of the exclusive shelves safe (not changing the status of the book if it was already added, but not linked).
Situation. I add a few new books to calibre. Some of them are on goodreads shelves, some not. Some read and some not. I don't know which. Syncing won't work, since these books aren't linked. If I just add them to my to read shelf, the ones which already are on that shelf won't be added, but all others will be added, even if they are already on my read shelf.

You suggested making empty books for the books which ain't on calibre. This could work for the books I wish to buy, but how does it work for my read shelf? I have all those books, they just aren't added to calibre yet. What happens then I add them to calibre? I get duplicates? Especially if the title doesn't match exactly (like "The" is missing or similar or author is BA Author instead of B.A. Author).

Also can you add a book to not an exclusive shelf, then it isn't on any of the exclusive selves?

Sorry if I am bothering you with my questions, but I want to use this plug in to its full functionality and just want to understand how it works.

[kiwidude]

@Noughty - the sync dialog will only perform actions for books that are linked. However it does give you a visual indication of all the books on your shelf that it has no links for. When it pops open, it will display all the books on your shelf. Of those books, some will have been linked previously (using whatever previous action in Goodreads). Others it will have on the fly linked automatically for you (by comparing ISBNs). The rest will either be books that you must manually link (you have them in Calibre with a matching title/author, but a different ISBN edition), or they are books on your shelf you have no match in Calibre for at all (there is a right-click option allowing you to make an empty book entry).

You ask can you "not change the status". Well you must have an action for the shelf to be able to sync from it. So for instance your "read" shelf. I imagine you have some column or tag in your database that you use to indicate you have read a book. Setup that rule for the "read" shelf, and go ahead and perform the sync. All the books that are linked will then have that action applied. If you have already marked them in Calibre in the same way as being read, the "sync" will do nothing. e.g. if you are setting a Yes/No column to "Y", then syncing from the "read" shelf repeatedly will make no change to the Calibre record if it already has Y on it. If however it is a book you had not yet marked as read in Calibre, then surely you actually do want it to be updated, since it is on your Goodreads "read" shelf?

It doesn't matter if it is an empty book with no formats or not, it can still be marked as "read" in this way.

If you take this approach of treating Goodreads as your "master" for a starting point, then it means that as you add new books to Calibre you will know if they already exist on a Goodreads shelf or not. Since you will have an empty book entry for them if they did exist.

However there is one gotcha and you have correctly identified it, and that is the issue of duplicates caused by adding a book to Calibre where you are not identifying the author or title exactly. If you use the "automerge" feature in Preferences->Adding books, that should take care of simple mismatches in the title like "The". That does rely on a 100% match on author though, so if indeed your other is spelt differently it will not be picked up. See the "Duplicate detection" thread if you want an in-depth understanding of how this stuff works and some proposed changes (some of which were made, the plugin however has not been developed).

But surely the duplicates issue is a problem you are going to have no matter which approach you choose? At least by choosing sync first I would have thought your starting point would mean less work for you.

As for adding to a non-exclusive shelf, it is a limitation of Goodreads that a book must exist on one of your exclusive shelves. If you don't add it to one of those, then when you add a new book to say your "science-fiction" shelf, it will also put it on your "read" shelf.

I don't mind the questions at all - in fact a few posts back in this thread we were asking for people to share how they are using the plugin. I had to design the functionality around minimising the API calls rather than necessarily what people might find the most convenient way of interacting with Goodreads. I had hoped that the two might coincide, but without yourself and others sharing the steps in your workflow it is only guesswork on my part as I don't use the plugin myself outside of testing. I hope to one day, but as I am always trashing my shelves for test purposes then unless I open a separate account it is easier to just keep it that way until I feel the need to really use it myself and hopefully the development is more complete.

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Support skinning of icons by putting them in a plugin name subfolder of local resources/images

[Noughty]

I don't know if this is the update or something, but now no metadata is found.

[kiwidude]

What do you mean "no metadata"? You will need to be more specific.

The plugin update only changed where its icon images are looked for, nothing else.

[Noughty]

Tried 40 books and it always says failed to download metadata. Maybe it's something with calibre as now I turned on amazon and one more plug in for metadata and still nothing

[kiwidude]

This plugin has absolutely nothing to do with downloading metadata. Are you thinking of the Goodreads metadata download plugin? That is working fine for me (and has not been updated btw for a long time). You likely just have something about the book metadata that is causing no match to be found. If you runn Calibre in debug mode you will see messages explaining why it cannot find any matches.

Please post on the correct thread in future.

[nynaevelan]

Kiwidude:

Is there anyway to add an option to the plugin that would check for unlinked books? Although I have some DTB and audiobooks in Goodreads that are not a part of Calibre, I was trying to find a way to scroll through the list to make sure I do not have any Calibre books which are unlinked.

Nyn

[bookmonster]

Kiwidude, first of all THANK YOU for such an awesome plugin!!

I just wanted to revisit something from earlier in this thread:

Originally Posted by jesscat

But something I do very frequently (just to give you some idea of how at least one person uses Goodreads!), in fact every time I finish a book, is to change it from "to-read" to "read" and at the same time fill in the "Date Read" column (both custom Calibre columns) (if I were a big user of ratings, I might at the same time also fill in the ratings field). Since I also use GR, I am in the habit of making those same changes in GR at the same time, to the "read" shelf and the Date Read field, when I finish a book.

In my ideal world, the plug-in would permit me to make these changes in Calibre and then export them to GR, so I don't have to replicate them in GR myself.

I am still pretty new to GR, but I prefer to treat Calibre as my MASTER file, and GR as more of a "cloud" backup. I just wondered if you have given any more thought to adding the option to upload the ratings/read date etc. into GR?


Also please help my little pea brain understand: When adding a new book to Calibre and then linking to GR, how do I choose/determine which format I am linking to (paperback vs Kindle vs ebook etc). (Yes I'm OCD enough that it matters)