Can Someone Give me the Code Needed to Extract Title/Author From Added Books?

[rebeltaz]

I have tried to figure this out and I am running out of hair to pull.

My ebooks are stored on my drive as such:

This.is.a.Title_AuthorFirstName.AuthorLastName.ext

Can someone please give me the regex code that I need to give Calibre so that it can properly extract the title and author name (with spaces in place of periods) when adding books to my library?

[BetterRed]

I would use a file rename utility to replace the '.'s with spaces, and the underscore to ' - ', to get "This is a Title - AuthorFirstName AuthorLastName" and then use the template {title} - {authors}

Why? Because I'd rather catch any anomalies before I add them.

My favourite Windows renamer is Bulk Rename Utility - mainly because I've been using it since the year dot

BR

[dwig]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

...
My favourite Windows renamer is Bulk Rename Utility - mainly because I've been using it since the year dot

BR

+1

BulkRenameUtility has been in my "tool kit" for ages. It's a very powerful tool.

[rebeltaz]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I would use a file rename utility to replace the '.'s with spaces, and the underscore to ' - ', to get "This is a Title - AuthorFirstName AuthorLastName" and then use the template {title} - {authors}

Why? Because I'd rather catch any anomalies before I add them.

My favourite Windows renamer is Bulk Rename Utility - mainly because I've been using it since the year dot

BR

I run linux and when I need to bulk rename, depending on the complexity if the situation, I either use the command line sed or rename or I'll use the GUI krename.

I really don't want to rename the files. When working with files that have spaces in their filenames from the command, you have to enclose the path/filename in quotes. If you use underscores or dots, though, you can omit the quotes. It's just easier without the spaces and I've grown accustomed to this file naming convention over the past decade or so.

[BetterRed]

@rebeltaz - if you can change the name via a command line or utility you can surely change it back again. Otherwise create a folder of hardlinks, massage those filenames as described, upload to calibre, delete the hardlinks.

Why do you want to keep those the.book_first.name_second_name.ext files anyway, calibre's going to copy them into a library using its own directory and file naming rules.

BR

[rebeltaz]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Why do you want to keep those the.book_first.name_second_name.ext files anyway, calibre's going to copy them into a library using its own directory and file naming rules.

BR

I know Calibre copies them to it's own library. I keep these books in their own original directories, with my own structure and naming conventions mostly as backup. I really only use calibre when transferring books to and from ereaders, though. If I need to access an ebook on my computer, it's just as quick for me to just use a file browser as it is to load calibre.

That and it's a control thing. I'd rather tell a computer what to do with my data than have the computer tell me what to do with it

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by rebeltaz

That and it's a control thing. I'd rather tell a computer what to do with my data than have the computer tell me what to do with it

Which is why I made this suggestion:

Originally Posted by BetterRed

. . . create a folder of hardlinks, massage those filenames as described, upload to calibre, delete the hardlinks . . .

You could add a twist, create the hardlinks in calibre's designated autoadd folder, and then it will delete the hardlinks. I've not tested that on Linux.

BR

[rebeltaz]

I may try the hard links thing. I probably wouldn't bother to delete the links. Either that or just copy them to the backup drive, rename the one I'm uploading to calibre and then delete that one.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[chaley]

You could also add the books with the dots in the title and author, then use bulk metadata search and replace to fix them (remove the dots). If you use the feature "add tag when adding books" then you can limit the fix operations to the books you just added. You can also "save" the expressions to make it easier to repeat them.