[GUI Plugin] Goodreads Sync

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by nynaevelan

But other than #1 and 2 which are critical choices, I would be happy with any improvements/changes you all can come with, especially CWatkins because she pushes me to reach higher with her organizational mind.

Nyn

And I just randomly happened to drop by this thread today! Which is odd in itself because I don't use this plugin. I tried, but honestly, after falling off in adding books to GR some time ago, things got so out of sync between GR and my library that even with the plugin, I was too overwhelmed. Goodreads was the beast that broke my "organizational mind". After I gave up, I only added more books to GR if I was currently reading it, needed it for an upcoming group read, or some other "special occasion".

So, clean slate wishlist, eh? I honestly don't know. I'll have to reinstall the plugin and see if there's anything that will make it work for me. Wow, that sounded bad, but I don't mean to say there's anything wrong with the plugin - the problem is obviously me in this case. The plugin and I just didn't "click" the first time. Maybe we can make up and be friends. I'll get back to ya on that.

I hope it works out for us this time, because I'm sure no one will be surprised by the fact that having my Goodreads catalog complete will ease my mind a great deal, and having it sync'd with my Library would be heavenly. I just need to get things to the point where it's just maintenance, and I'm nowhere near that point. Wish me luck.

(Makes mental note to turn off Goodreads add-books feed updates so my GR friends don't kill me when 600+ books get added in one day.)

Edited to add: I'll be up late tonight. I'm missing a ton of ISBNs that I need for an accurate CSV import into GR. Then, since I have a Kindle (LN, FN) I need to flex my weakling regex muscles (fortunately that's one of the few operations I can manage ) and create a custom column so GR won't skip half of the books on the CSV. Now that I think about it, maybe it's GR's fault that I gave up on this. Despite my complaining, I'm glad Nyn kicked my butt into gear by mentioning my name. Sometimes peer pressure is a good thing.

[CWatkinsNash]

Update (3 hours later): Not happening. I will go ahead with the csv import to get the rest of my books on GR tomorrow or the next day, but I don't have the patience for syncing. It's not the plugin, it does what it's supposed to. It's just that the link between GR and my Library isn't vital enough for me to really want this bad enough to do the work involved. I know, I said it would be "heavenly" but I think I was just feeling ambitious, because after getting only a handful of books linked and shelves imported, I'm just not feeling it.

What I may do instead is use my GR Shelves column to list the shelves I want the books on, because that will export with the CSV and into GR if I modify the column title. Kind of like syncing pre-emptively (and manually). If there's one thing I know how to do, it's make GR-compatible CSV files, so I'll stick with my strengths. Obviously, I'm not going to go back and do all the ones already over there, but this will make close to half of them match.

[jesscat]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

So what would I like to improve? Well the main thing I have been doing is adding books to my read shelf. This necessitates a subsequent visit to the Goodreads website to set the "date read" column, my # review stars, and also the flag as to whether I "own" a book or not....

I think a while back in this thread I went through my own Goodreads/Calibre "workflow," explaining what I'd like to see with this plugin, and you've captured some of it here, which suggests you are using GR similarly to how I do!

I use GR at two points. First when I add a book to my Calibre library, I also want to add it to GR. The plugin works reasonably well for this. I add the book to Calibre, then use link. But then I usually like to add the book to more than one shelf, and it's a pain having to do this one by one. What I often end up doing is adding it to one shelf, then using the plugin to "view" the book in GR, then manually adding all the shelves in GR - that's faster than doing it one by one through the plugin.

So request #1:

1) Add books to multiple GR shelves at once

Then I use GR again when I finish a book. At this point I want to mark it read - but I also want to mark the date read, sometimes give it stars, sometimes add a review, occasionally add it to other shelves. For this the plugin just doesn't do what I'd like it to do; sure I could use it to mark the book read or change shelves, but there's no real point, since I have to go to GR anyway to do all the other things. What I'd love is to be able, on a book-by-book basis, *from Calibre*:

2) Sync my GR "date read" from my "date read" column in Calibre, and do the same with my Calibre stars column and possibly the actual text review

If I could do this I wouldn't have to manually go to GR and replicate what I'm doing in Calibre each time I finish a book.

For me syncing of entire shelves isn't that important, and I don't do GR->Calibre syncing at all, so those aspects of the plugin aren't ones I'm familiar with. What I would love is to be able to get more information, on a book-by-book (not shelf or tag) basis, from Calibre into GR.

[Gvaz]

I'm getting this error trying to sync my library

calibre, version 0.8.6
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>TypeError</b>:list indices must be integers, not unicode

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "calibre_plugins.goodreads_sync.action", line 250, in sync_shelf
  File "calibre_plugins.goodreads_sync.action", line 392, in update_calibre_database_ids_after_sync
  File "site-packages\calibre\library\database2.py", line 2798, in set_isbn
  File "site-packages\calibre\library\database2.py", line 2750, in set_identifier
  File "site-packages\calibre\library\database2.py", line 2726, in get_identifiers
TypeError: list indices must be integers, not unicode

[quisvir]

Is it possible to use the upload tags as shelves function using a custom column built from another column?

I have a custom column Read/Reading/Unread, built from a yes/no Read column (as described by sweetpea here). But when I try to select this column in the Edit Shelf/Tags Mappings dialog, it's not listed - only the tags column shows up.

In other words: I use a yes/no toggle in Calibre to track read status. A custom column translates this to Read/Reading/Unread. I would like this column to be the basis for my read/currently-reading/to-read shelves on GR. I hope my question is clear

Update: I changed a line in the plugin's source code to enable enumeration of composite columns. If anyone is interested, I pasted the code below. Do note that I have no idea if this can have negative side effects in some cases. Of course, it would be great if kiwidude could update the plugin with this change

Spoiler:

Config.py, line 1092, change

tags_custom_columns = self.get_custom_columns(['text'])

to

tags_custom_columns = self.get_custom_columns(['text', 'composite'])

[kiwidude]

@Gvaz - do you get this for all your books or just certain ones? Do those particular books have ISBNs (or not have ISBNs)? Any steps to replicate this?

@quisvir - the reason I did not allow such columns is they are read-only as far as the plugin is concerned. So while your tweak will work for users who are using the "Upload" tags function, it will vause problems for a user using the "Download" tags function. So if I make the change I will need to throw in some error dialogs etc around the place. I'll think about it - obviously you are up and running in the meantime.

[quisvir]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@quisvir - the reason I did not allow such columns is they are read-only as far as the plugin is concerned. So while your tweak will work for users who are using the "Upload" tags function, it will vause problems for a user using the "Download" tags function. So if I make the change I will need to throw in some error dialogs etc around the place. I'll think about it - obviously you are up and running in the meantime.

Good point. No need to put much work into this, because as you said, it's working perfectly for me already

[danwdoo]

I finally sat down and worked my calibre and goodreads shelves to match and started using this plugin and man do I love it! I do have one question though that I have not been able to figure out. Is there any way to change the default shelf that books are added to when syncing this way? Right now they all go to my 'read' bookshelf but I want them added to my 'to-read' shelf because I haven't read the majority of them yet. I wasn't sure if this was a setting for the plugin, on goodreads, or just isn't possible. Either way, this is one awesome tool!

[Noughty]

I have the same problem, but I just use batch edit in goodreads and move books to the correct exclusive shelf.

[kiwidude]

I don't understand. There is no concept of a "default shelf" in this plugin. The menu items for adding to a shelf or syncing from a shelf always refer to a specific shelf name. So if you want books on your "to-read" shelf then you use "Add to shelf" -> "to-read" etc.

What are you doing that is so different?

EDIT: There is one scenario that perhaps you are hitting. Are you perhaps trying to add to a non-exclusive shelf, without having it on your exclusive shelves as well? IIRC it is a limitation of Goodreads that every book must exist on one of your exclusive shelves. And if you haven't put it on one of your Goodreads exclusive shelves, then the Goodreads website will put it on your read shelf as a default. Is that the behaviour you see?

In which case the solution is simple - add the book to your to-read shelf first then as well to your custom shelf. If you don't want it on both, you have to make your custom shelf exclusive.

I don't use non-exclusive shelves myself (I'm really only interested in the "read" shelf in my usage) but I am aware of others asking for the ability to add to multiple shelves at once. The issue is that there is a lot of complexity behind that which requires a major change to the plugin, which I don'#t have time for at the moment.

[danwdoo]

You hit my issue exactly. I was adding them to a non-exclusive genre bookshelf but they were also being added to a general read shelf. I had wanted been putting them in a general to-read shelf but I never thought about only using all exclusive shelves so I will definitely investigate that as an option.

Thanks!

[emalvick]

I just tried out your plugin in and find it nice. I guess now that I am all linked up, I probably won't need what I will end up suggesting, but a feature that would have been nice is being able to run all my sync actions at once (from Goodreads to Calibre). I started by syncing everything that was in Goodreads to Calibre, but it would be helpful to not have to go shelf by shelf in syncing up.

This is probably more of my problem, but a lot of books on my shelves are DTB or even Library books that aren't in Calibre, so it would also be nice to filter on a particular shelf (I have one called ebooks) so that the DTB are skipped when trying to sync from Goodreads.

Again, this isn't a huge deal as now that I've gone through the initial syncing, most of my workflow should be from the Calibre side, which I don't see where there would be any problems.

Either way, this is a great plugin, and I love the integration into the toolbar up top.

[ki5ck]

I've been getting this error for the last month or so when I try to add a single book to a goodreads shelf:

calibre, version 0.8.7
ERROR: Goodreads Failure: The request contacting Goodreads has failed. Please try again.

URL: http://www.goodreads.com/review/list.xml?v=2&shelf=to-read&page=1&per_page=200
Response Code: 401

Then, I get this one after I acknowledge the first:

calibre, version 0.8.7
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>NameError</b>:global name 'DEBUG' is not defined

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "calibre_plugins.goodreads_sync.action", line 207, in add_or_remove_to_shelf
NameError: global name 'DEBUG' is not defined

I revoked access in my goodreads account for the plug-in, and then re-authorized it, but it didn't help.

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Fix bug of DEBUG not available when error thrown
• Ensure the book details pane is updated after adding a Goodreads link to the selected book

@ki5ck - this will fix the second of those two errors. As to why you get the first one, no idea - perhaps their website was having issues.

[ki5ck]

That did fix my second problem, thx. Still have the first. Don't think it's their website; this has been happening consistently since early June.

It does say the error code is 401 (unauthorized). When I try that url in the error message in a browser, it says "invalid API key", but that may just be that it isn't meant to be used in a browser.