Purge PI Settings

[BetterRed]

AFAIK, there is no 'official way' to remove a plugin and its settings, when a plugin is removed its settings are left behind.

If I remove a PI that stores all of its settings in the config folder then I can delete it's settings file, so if I removed Extract ISBN then I would delete the Extract ISBN.json file from the config plugins folder.

But some plugins store their settings in the library database files (some such the Reading List PI do both), The only way I know to get rid of the database settings is to

• edit the metadata_db_prefs_backup.json to remove the plugin's data, which in most cases is more than a few lines, it can be hundreds, and I'm not sure they are necessarily contiguous. Given its a file that's meant to written and read by a computer program, editing it by hand is fraught with nasty potential consequences.
  
• rebuild the database via the calibredb restore_database option. On a large library this can take a long time, and then there's this:
  
  

  WARNING: This command completely regenerates your database. You will lose all saved searches, user categories, plugboards, stored per-book conversion settings, and custom recipes. Restored metadata will only be as accurate as what is found in the OPF files.

  There's nothing wrong with the database, and my OPF files are in good (perfect ?) order.

Why do I care, because the Reading List PI isn't doing what I think it should be doing on my main library but it is on other libraries. The difference is almost certainly in the settings it has stored in my main library's (80,000 books) database. So I want a 'clean slate'.

Restoring from backup isn't a solution, I haven't used the RL PI on this library for years.

Does anyone know of an alternative? Or is this one of those TINA gotchas?



Aside - there should be an option in the Remove PI function to delete settings, especially those kept in the databases.

BR

[PeterT]

I thought the button Clear found in the Customize Plugin / Other tab / View Library Preferences would drop the settings.

[davidfor]

A lot of kiwidudes plugins have a way to reset the preferences. Usually, it is available from a button in the plugins configuration dialog. For Reading List, open the configuration, go to the "Other" tab and press the "View library preferences..." button. This shows you all the preferences for the current library. Pressing the "Clear" will ask if you want to reset the preferences.

If you get desperate for plugins that don't have a reset option, you can delete the entries from the library database. Open it with an SQLite manager program and look in the table "preferences". The plugin settings should be in the rows where the "key" column starts with "namespaced:PluginName". For the Reading List, it is "namespaced:ReadingListPlugin:settings". Deleting these while calibre is not running should clear the settings.

[BetterRed]

Thanks guys

I've only ever noticed the Preferences button on View Manager. But it has no Clear button, so I've wondered 'what's the point of this, apart from debugging. If its easy, perhaps a Clear button could be added to it. In case I ever need it. Find Duplicates has a Clear.

I had already removed the Reading List row in the preferences table exactly as you suggested David. I assume that's what Clear does.

BR