Display Book UUID in Calibre?

[hd_cal_dave]

Is there a way I can add a custom column within the Calibre UI that will show the unique UUID associated for each book? This value is inside the opf files:

<dc:identifier opf:scheme="uuid" id="uuid_id">2496fc3d-7415-484c-9a32-b4333c63d901</dc:identifier>

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by hd_cal_dave

Is there a way I can add a custom column within the Calibre UI that will show the unique UUID associated for each book? This value is inside the opf files:

<dc:identifier opf:scheme="uuid" id="uuid_id">2496fc3d-7415-484c-9a32-b4333c63d901</dc:identifier>

No need for a custom column, it can be shown in Book details:



BR

[hd_cal_dave]

Thank you - that is very helpful. Any way to add it as a column or be able to search for it?

[DNSB]

Out of curiosity, why are you interested in displaying the UUID? It is rather useless since it is randomly generated and can easily be modified. Some ePubs use the GUID pattern for the ID (which seems to be the one you are interested in) and yet others use an alphanumeric string of varying length.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by hd_cal_dave

Thank you - that is very helpful. Any way to add it as a column or be able to search for it?

It is a column, in the sense that's its a field in the books table, like the title, publisher, modified_date etc.

It is created and managed by calibre for its internal use - my understanding is that it plays a role in getting 'books' and associated metadata onto some e-reading devices. If you want to see it in the book list you will have to use a composite column, viz:



The 'uuid' should not to be confused with 'id' which is the book table primary key (generically referred to as row-id), or with the 'identifiers' data -- which is a data structure containing multiple elements such as ISBN, Amazon, Google, Kobo etc product codes.

BR

[hd_cal_dave]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Out of curiosity, why are you interested in displaying the UUID? It is rather useless since it is randomly generated and can easily be modified. Some ePubs use the GUID pattern for the ID (which seems to be the one you are interested in) and yet others use an alphanumeric string of varying length.

It's a bit of a long story. I use MoonReader on my devices and want to share reading position and annotations between devices. To do this, the book file has to always have the exact same name. The only way I have found to do this reliably is to use Calibre Companion and have the mobile book files named after the UUID. In this way, if the title or authors were to get tweaked I wouldn't lose my annotations. It works great, but now I have directories full of files named after the Calibre's UUIDS. I am in the process of repairing several years worth of messed up entries and it is not easy to find out which Calibre book corresponds to which UUID.

[BetterRed]

FWIW: If you create a CSV catalogue you can select the UUID field

BR