Thread: [GUI Plugin] Kobo Utilities
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Old 10-27-2016, 09:23 PM   #1199
davidfor
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Posts: 24,905
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Sydney, Australia
Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos
Quote:
Originally Posted by ToOmS View Post
Hello David, thank you so much for your work on this addon!
I was wondering if the plugin is offering a way to export a device's books list (as a CSV file for example). Or if there is a way to achive this feature.
I have several devices and would like to backup such a list in order to restore the books from Calibre when things go wrong.
No, the plugin doesn't have a way to do it, largely because I don't think it's needed, and because there are other tools already around to do it.

Calibre can produce a catalogue for books from it's library. This is started from one of the options on the conversion button. I don't use it but you can use it to produce the catalogue based on either the selected books or the currently displayed list. You should be able to generate the catalogue when the device is connected.

If you want to look in you calibre library when the device is not connected and see what is on it, then that is easy as well. The simplest way is to add a tag to indicate which device it is on. When they are connected, select all the books and add the tag. Then remember to maintain that.

You can do this automatically with the Reading List plugin. It can populate a reading list when a device is connected. And it can add a tag to the books. It can also send books to the device from a list or keep the device in sync with a reading list.

But, personally, I always found this question a little strange. At one time I set-up reading lists to be automatically populated when the device was connected. But, I found I never looked at them. And when I did do a factory reset, I didn't use these lists to repopulate the device. What I do is to have a "Send on the connect" reading list for each device. When I add a book to my library, I add it to the list for each device I want it on. Same goes if I change the book in any way. When I connect the device, the books are sent without any action from me. That means that the answer to the question "what books are on a device?" is, the books I want there.

For the "things go wrong" scenario, well, they don't. I haven't needed to do an unplanned factory reset* for a very long time. I rarely see corrupted databases and when I do I have backups taken with each calibre connect. In the past, when I did factory reset more often, I took it as an opportunity to cleanup what was on the device. I keep good records of the reading status of all my books, so I just send the books that haven't been finished.

* I do lots of planned factory resets to test something. But, I take a copy of everything on book partition, do whatever I want to do and then restore the saved files.
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