user defined device: send items to specific folder

[fekhner]

A great feature for the user defined device would be the possibility to send items with certains tags to certain folders, for instance items with the tag "News" to the folder "News" on the device etc. Would this be possible to implement ?

[Dopedangel]

As long as all these folders are in the same directory it is possible. Just use {tags} at the start of your template.
If they are in different folders is still possible but a bit complicated.

[chaley]

Using {tags} in a template will get *all* the tags, not test for existence of a particular tag.

Starting a "more than you wanted to know" section....

The easiest thing to do is to create a custom text column (not tags-like) and enter the folder name in that. Then use {#column_name} in the template.

You can avoid the extra column by using a template program to check if a tag is there and return the folder name you wish to use. This is rather complicated. The construct would be something like

{tags:'first_non_empty(
    in_list($, ',', '^news$', 'news_folder', ''), 
    in_list($, ',', '^foo$', 'foo_folder', ''),
    in_list($, ',', '^bar$', 'bar_folder', ''))'}

You can simplify the above if you don't care about submatches, meaning you don't have tags of the form "my_news" or don't care if you get both "news" and "my_news" when checking for the tag "news".

[Manichean]

There's a probably-largely-forgotten feature that allows you to specify folders via tags. The first tag starting with a slash will be used as a folder name, for example, an item with the tag '/News' will be sent to the subfolder 'News'. I don't know if this feature or the standard send to device- template takes precedence.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Manichean

There's a probably-largely-forgotten feature that allows you to specify folders via tags. The first tag starting with a slash will be used as a folder name, for example, an item with the tag '/News' will be sent to the subfolder 'News'. I don't know if this feature or the standard send to device- template takes precedence.

Hadn't noticed that, even though I have looked at that code a thousand times.

This technique works only for send-to-device.

Some details gathered by code examination:
- If the book has the tag "News", then except for the Nook color, the book will be placed into a News folder. I have no idea why the Nook Color turns this feature off.
- If the book has a tag that begins with a '/', then that tag will be used as the folder name. Note that the tag can have embedded slashes, which creates a path.
- If a book has both a "News" tag and a tag beginning with a slash, then one of them will win. Which one depends on the order the tags were added to the library.
- If a book has more than one tag beginning with a slash, then one of them will win. Which one depends on the order the tags were added to the library.

In all the above cases, all but the last component (after the last slash) of the path template are ignored.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by chaley

Hadn't noticed that, even though I have looked at that code a thousand times.

I found out about that as an undocumented feature sometime around 0.6, if memory serves. It was never documented, as far as I know, and is now made largely redundant by templates. I use it because of inertia- I never quite got around to configuring a template, and, taking care to have only one tag starting with a slash per book, it works for me.

In all the above cases, all but the last component (after the last slash) of the path template are ignored.

Interesting to know, thanks for looking.

[kovidgoyal]

IIRC user_none added that feature in the very early days of calibre.

[Prevayl]

I am super noob to tag and codes like the one posted by Chaley. I have a motorola Photon 4G running Android 2.3.4 and im using the Nook app from B&N i just want to tell the Calibre software to send the books to the device...but to the folders that are already created by the nook app /sdcard/nook/My Documents/
Is there a can someone help me with the code that i would use for that. Im kinda lost. Any help would be greatly appreciated

[fekhner]

Originally Posted by chaley

Starting a "more than you wanted to know" section....

Not sure why you are saying that, it is precisely what I wanted to know, thanks very much I am now able for the first time to directly send books to the /Books folder and news to the /News folder in the main directory of the Irex DR1000. [FYI, the default driver puts the books in a new directory called /ebooks that is not accessed by various tools of the device (recently read etc), while the news have been put in the subfolder /ebooks/news and are drowned among all the books].

This brings me to another question, if I may. The default driver for my second device (Irex DR800) puts the books in the correct directory, but the news are still in a subfolder of this directory. What are my options to solve this as well?

1) Can I define a second "user defined device" co-existing with the first ?
2) I tried your code above for the default Irex DR00 driver by indicating a relative path for the news directory, I naively tried
"in_list($, ',', '^news$', '../News', '') but it does not seem to work.

Any suggestions ?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by fekhner

This brings me to another question, if I may. The default driver for my second device (Irex DR800) puts the books in the correct directory, but the news are still in a subfolder of this directory. What are my options to solve this as well?

1) Can I define a second "user defined device" co-existing with the first ?

No.

2) I tried your code above for the default Irex DR00 driver by indicating a relative path for the news directory, I naively tried
"in_list($, ',', '^news$', '../News', '') but it does not seem to work.

The file path normalizer strips relative moves.

I can't see any way to make the standard driver not put news in a subdirectory. You could run from source and modify the plugin, adding
NEWS_IN_FOLDER = False
to the Irex 800 driver.

Perhaps someone else will have a solution.