MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - FLAG (Fanfiction.net Lightweight Automated Grabber)

ilovejedd · 09-13-2011, 12:50 AM

Hello again! Congratulations on all the improvements! It's the first time I've tried the FLAG web service since a couple years back and it's looking much, much nicer than the older version. The ePub output looks very professional. By the looks of things, you've also gotten UTF-8 working just fine now.

A few comments and suggestions:

The top left and right border graphics don't translate very well on small screens such as the iPhone. The images end up overlapping some of the text in Stanza. Perhaps you could use a single graphic top center instead. e.g.:

link
Perhaps you could use a Unicode font for the cover image? The title of the following story just shows up as boxes in the cover: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7246882/. In the same vein, some operating systems don't play nice with unusual characters in filenames. This was downloaded as "panneler-san - 私にうそをつく.epub" on my Windows 7 PC. Not sure if XP would have handled it as well.
For FanFiction.Net, add the category/ies as subject. Assuming you're still using the same ffnet.source.php, adding the following lines to ffnet_get_meta() should do the trick:
Code:
```
preg_match("/var cat_title = '(.+)';/Ui", $page, $matches);
$meta['category'] = $matches[1];
```

Use the ff.net url as identifier in content.opf, e.g.:

Code:

<dc:identifier xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
               id="storyid"
               opf:scheme="URI">http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1234567/</dc:identifier>

You might also want to change the content.opf header to reflect the URL as the unique indentifier:

Code:

<package xmlns="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" version="2.0" unique-identifier="storyid">

On a side note, what zip class are you using to make the epubs? Conversion via Calibre is pretty slow so I'd prefer to create the epubs directly in PHP but the built-in zip class just isn't working for me.

Again, thank you very much for all your work! I'm using a customized, "webified" version of your original CLI script and it has made archiving fanfics and reading them on my smartphones, tablets and e-ink readers so much easier. Heck, if not for the ease of fanfic -> epub conversion that FLAG has afforded me, I probably wouldn't have considered buying an e-ink reader at all.

09-13-2011, 12:50 AM	#295
ilovejedd hopeless n00b Posts: 5,110 Karma: 19597086 Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: in the middle of nowhere Device: PW4, PW3, Libra H2O, iPad 10.5, iPad 11, iPad 12.9	Hello again! Congratulations on all the improvements! It's the first time I've tried the FLAG web service since a couple years back and it's looking much, much nicer than the older version. The ePub output looks very professional. By the looks of things, you've also gotten UTF-8 working just fine now. A few comments and suggestions: The top left and right border graphics don't translate very well on small screens such as the iPhone. The images end up overlapping some of the text in Stanza. Perhaps you could use a single graphic top center instead. e.g.: link Perhaps you could use a Unicode font for the cover image? The title of the following story just shows up as boxes in the cover: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7246882/. In the same vein, some operating systems don't play nice with unusual characters in filenames. This was downloaded as "panneler-san - 私にうそをつく.epub" on my Windows 7 PC. Not sure if XP would have handled it as well. For FanFiction.Net, add the category/ies as subject. Assuming you're still using the same ffnet.source.php, adding the following lines to ffnet_get_meta() should do the trick: Code: preg_match("/var cat_title = '(.+)';/Ui", $page, $matches); $meta['category'] = $matches[1]; Use the ff.net url as identifier in content.opf, e.g.: Code: <dc:identifier xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" id="storyid" opf:scheme="URI">http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1234567/</dc:identifier> You might also want to change the content.opf header to reflect the URL as the unique indentifier: Code: <package xmlns="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" version="2.0" unique-identifier="storyid"> On a side note, what zip class are you using to make the epubs? Conversion via Calibre is pretty slow so I'd prefer to create the epubs directly in PHP but the built-in zip class just isn't working for me. Again, thank you very much for all your work! I'm using a customized, "webified" version of your original CLI script and it has made archiving fanfics and reading them on my smartphones, tablets and e-ink readers so much easier. Heck, if not for the ease of fanfic -> epub conversion that FLAG has afforded me, I probably wouldn't have considered buying an e-ink reader at all. Last edited by ilovejedd; 09-13-2011 at 12:58 AM.