How to script conversion of HTML, not RSS?

Saint Aardvark · 02-26-2014, 09:33 AM

Hi all -- apologies if this is answered somewhere else, but I haven't been able to find anything that seems to do what I want.

I'm interested in using Calibre recipes to convert HTML to epub, ideally from a command-line (I'm a Linux weenie from way back

). From what I've seen by digging around in the API documents and the recipes, this seems quite different from the usual approach of pointing Calibre at an RSS feed. Often I come across an article on a website I'd like to read later on my Kobo, so I'd like to have some way of saying "Go fetch this URL".

So far I've been scripting this using wget for the downloading, then some truly awful sed scripts to get the relevant bits of HTML, and finally passing that to "ebook-convert". Of course, this would be a whole lot easier with a recipe: parsing, removing cruft, and all of that.

Like I said, it seems that Calibre is (as far as news feeds go) quite oriented around RSS. Is there a way around this, or something I may have missed? Any pointers would be gratefully received.

kovidgoyal · 02-26-2014, 10:15 AM

Many calibre recipes parse html files to get a list of articles, rather than using rss. See the parse_index() method. Implement it to return a lsit of articles that contains onlya single article, poiting to your html page.

Saint Aardvark · 02-28-2014, 09:54 AM

I'll check that out. Many thanks!

02-26-2014, 09:33 AM	#1
Saint Aardvark Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2013 Device: Kobo Touch	How to script conversion of HTML, not RSS? Hi all -- apologies if this is answered somewhere else, but I haven't been able to find anything that seems to do what I want. I'm interested in using Calibre recipes to convert HTML to epub, ideally from a command-line (I'm a Linux weenie from way back ). From what I've seen by digging around in the API documents and the recipes, this seems quite different from the usual approach of pointing Calibre at an RSS feed. Often I come across an article on a website I'd like to read later on my Kobo, so I'd like to have some way of saying "Go fetch this URL". So far I've been scripting this using wget for the downloading, then some truly awful sed scripts to get the relevant bits of HTML, and finally passing that to "ebook-convert". Of course, this would be a whole lot easier with a recipe: parsing, removing cruft, and all of that. Like I said, it seems that Calibre is (as far as news feeds go) quite oriented around RSS. Is there a way around this, or something I may have missed? Any pointers would be gratefully received.

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02-26-2014, 10:15 AM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 44,333 Karma: 23661992 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Many calibre recipes parse html files to get a list of articles, rather than using rss. See the parse_index() method. Implement it to return a lsit of articles that contains onlya single article, poiting to your html page.

02-28-2014, 09:54 AM	#3
Saint Aardvark Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2013 Device: Kobo Touch	I'll check that out. Many thanks!

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