Can Calibre output a list of JUST authors?

[Chandrak]

I recently came into a truly massive pile of ebooks that probably runs back something like 10 or 15 years, and has something like 10k+ files in it. (Mostly duplicates in various formats, but easily several thousand books total). I've decided to take on the daunting task of setting it all up in Calibre.

My main question is wondering if there's a way I can get Calibre to just export a list of just the authors - as far as I can figure out, the Catalogue feature will make me a book that lists all books by author, but I dont need all the titles. I just want something that will help me find authors I actually am interested in.

On a seperate issue, not really part of the question, but I'd appreciate any advice people might have on importing such a massively ridiculous archive of books, because it looks like a lot of these don't have any proper metadata, or at least Calibre doesn't read it right. (Hence wanting to do the list of authors only, because that part I can do en-masse pretty quickly, and then find who I like, and actually do the metadata myself for those few).

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Chandrak

I recently came into a truly massive pile of ebooks that probably runs back something like 10 or 15 years, and has something like 10k+ files in it. (Mostly duplicates in various formats, but easily several thousand books total). I've decided to take on the daunting task of setting it all up in Calibre.

My main question is wondering if there's a way I can get Calibre to just export a list of just the authors - as far as I can figure out, the Catalogue feature will make me a book that lists all books by author, but I dont need all the titles. I just want something that will help me find authors I actually am interested in.

On a seperate issue, not really part of the question, but I'd appreciate any advice people might have on importing such a massively ridiculous archive of books, because it looks like a lot of these don't have any proper metadata, or at least Calibre doesn't read it right. (Hence wanting to do the list of authors only, because that part I can do en-masse pretty quickly, and then find who I like, and actually do the metadata myself for those few).

Look at the options for Command Line tools: calibredb list

[Chandrak]

Originally Posted by theducks

Look at the options for Command Line tools: calibredb list

Can you explain more? I actually have no idea how to get to the command line prompt; I'm on Windows, and for whatever reason the Calibre manual only tells you how to find the command line tools on OSX.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Chandrak

Can you explain more? I actually have no idea how to get to the command line prompt; I'm on Windows, and for whatever reason the Calibre manual only tells you how to find the command line tools on OSX.

Just open a Windows cmd prompt and type in the command.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Chandrak

Can you explain more? I actually have no idea how to get to the command line prompt; I'm on Windows, and for whatever reason the Calibre manual only tells you how to find the command line tools on OSX.

Nothing special to do in Windows. Calibre uses the standard windows console (nee DOS Box) to get a console start->search box->cmd. Console replacements should be OK, I use ConEmu.

The cli programs are wherever you installed calibre - default is %SYSDRIVE%/Program Files/Calibre2 for 64 bit and %SYSDRIVE%/Program Files (X86)/Calibre2 for 32bit. Make sure the location is in the Windows PATH Environment Variable

The commands are documented here - Command Line Interface

BR

[Chandrak]

Are the documented commands a bit out of date or something? I've tried a few

(i.e: )
calibredb catalog (path.format) --fields:author

like in the example, and it tells me that there is no such option as --fields

Edit: Actually, -f works for other functions, but NOT for the catalog function, apparently.

"list -f authors" seems to work OK. But not "catalog (path.format) -f authors"

[Chandrak]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

The commands are documented here - Command Line Interface

BR

First, as far as I can tell, the commands are a bit out of date. At the very least, there were a few in there that I tried that it told me didnt exist, and I had to use the in-command help function to find out what it was changed to.

Secondly, I still seem to have the problem that making a catalogue, even if you just tell it to show only authors, it still lists out every book title BY author. I don't want that, I dont care about the titles. I want to know JUST authors and no other information. But I don't see a way to do that in the commands list, unless its some combination of functions I'm not seeing.


Edit: Actually, I also notice that it listed them by series as well, even though the help function tells me that when generating a catalog, thats off by default.

[kovidgoyal]

The command line interface documentation is not out of date. It is auto generated from the actual code, at every calibre release.

And if you want to generate a list of authors, you need to be able script, for which windows is rather painful. On linux or OS X, it is simple, but on windows, without powerful command line utils, you would need to resort to using calibre-debug, like this:

calibre-debug -c "from calibre.library import db; db = db().new_api; print '\n'.join(sorted(db.all_field_names('authors')))"

And on window you would need to redirect the output of that command to a file, as the windows console cannot handle large amounts of output.

[Chandrak]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

And on window you would need to redirect the output of that command to a file, as the windows console cannot handle large amounts of output.

Well a text file list of some kind is actually what I need, and def would be necessary since there's probably at least two to three hundred authors in there. But thats way beyond my ability to understand what I'm doing. I know a little bit about manuevering around a command line prompt from my days with OSX and my constant prodding at minecraft mods, but not much more than that.

I know enough to know I could get myself into trouble poking at things without much more specific instructions :/ But essentially that answers the question, that Calibre can't really do it the way that I wan't without a lot more technical knowledge.

[AnotherCat]

If you just want to get a list of authors, and not their books as well you can do that in Windows itself. One can just open the Calibre library folder in Windows Explorer (aka File Explorer in Win 8.x) and as books are placed in a folder under that for each author you will have a screen "list" of authors.

One can then send this list of author folders to a text file; how to do so may differ according to the version of Windows you are using. Google will find how but for Win 7 and 8 just hold Shift while Right clicking with the mouse in a clear area of the Explorer window, select "Open command window here.." and type DIR > authors.txt.

The file authors.txt will appear in your Calibre library folder and will contain a list of the author folders i.e. a list of the authors in your Calibre database. It will also include the date and size of each folder but if you just want a list of authors for checking purposes then I assume that will not matter.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Chandrak

But essentially that answers the question, that Calibre can't really do it the way that I wan't without a lot more technical knowledge.

If what you are looking for is a button that says "Click me and I will do what you want me to do", then no, calibre has no such button.

You need to be willing to learn/explore, or you will always be limited to doing only tasks that have corresponding buttons, in every software program you use.

For instance, if you are scared of the command line, you can use the catalog feature to generate a csv catalog in calibre (that actually has a button) and then import it into a spreadsheet program to get a list of authors, but then you have to be willing to learn how to use a spreadsheet program.

[Chandrak]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

You need to be willing to learn/explore, or you will always be limited to doing only tasks that have corresponding buttons, in every software program you use.

I have know idea why you suddenly assumed I wasn't willing to explore, but given the fact that I COULD just go through the authors sort and type up a text file by hand, and save a lot more time, I'll just leave this here:

http://xkcd.com/1319/
http://xkcd.com/1205/

[BetterRed]

@Chandrak- I find this program ==>> DB Browser for SQLite useful to interrogate the on-disk database. It can export to a CSV, which can be read, sorted, and rearranged in this program ==>> CSVFileView or of course a spreadsheet such as Excel, Calc or Sheets. You wont see columns created from other columns in the on-disk database.

You can easily break the on-disk database with SQLiteBrowser, so it's best to copy the metadata.db file elsewhere and open it there.

Here's the list of authors in my test library as a CSV created with SQLite Browser and viewed with CSVFileView.



SQLite Browser and CSVFileView are both free to use

BR

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Chandrak

I have know idea why you suddenly assumed I wasn't willing to explore, but given the fact that I COULD just go through the authors sort and type up a text file by hand, and save a lot more time, I'll just leave this here:

Because you said you were not, explicitly. Not to mention the fact that I gave you a copy paste command that would generate your list of authors in half a minute and all I asked you to do was to figure out how to redirect that commands output to a text file, which would take another half a minute to google. And then you claim that creating the authors list by hand would take less time.

Whatever, I have wasted enough time in this thread already.