Trouble creating a plugin.

[A0tmsk]

I just started working on a plugin for calibre using version 0.7.57 on linux and I am having trouble adding new plugins. I can add the ones I find in this forum, but that is all. Even the plugins Ive downloaded from the tutorial here do not work. What makes things stranger is that I can take one of the plugins from here that works, extract it, and rezip it, and it no longer works.

When I try to add a plugin in Preferences I get the following error:

calibre, version 0.7.57
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>InvalidPlugin</b>:The plugin in u'/home/steve/Downloads/Quality Check.zip' is invalid. It does not contain a top-level __init__.py file

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages/calibre/gui2/preferences/plugins.py", line 283, in add_plugin
File "site-packages/calibre/customize/ui.py", line 362, in add_plugin
File "site-packages/calibre/customize/ui.py", line 55, in load_plugin
File "site-packages/calibre/customize/zipplugin.py", line 160, in load
File "site-packages/calibre/customize/zipplugin.py", line 255, in _locate_code
InvalidPlugin: The plugin in u'/home/steve/Downloads/Quality Check.zip' is invalid. It does not contain a top-level __init__.py file

I get that top-level __init__.py error no matter what I do.

Any ideas?

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by A0tmsk

I just started working on a plugin for calibre using version 0.7.57 on linux and I am having trouble adding new plugins. I can add the ones I find in this forum, but that is all. Even the plugins Ive downloaded from the tutorial here do not work.

I have never done a plugin but you are right the helloworld_plugin.zip that you can download from that page will not work as is because as the error states It does not contain a top-level __init__.py file. The __init__.py file has to be in the top level of the zipped file. It can not be inside a directory within the zipped file.

Once I extracted the hello world directory and just zipped the __init__.py file up by itself, renamed the zip file helloworld_plugin.zip it added to calibre fine and it worked as advertised.

Originally Posted by A0tmsk

What makes things stranger is that I can take one of the plugins from here that works, extract it, and rezip it, and it no longer works.

When you rezip it do not zip the contents of the plugin inside another directory. I'm guessing when you view your new zip that the top level is a directory and you have to click down one level to see the plugin files.

See attached image to see what you should see inside your zip file. The __init__.py file is at the top level and it works fine. When you are rezipping it you must be putting it inside a directory.

Good Luck.

[kovidgoyal]

The example plugins linked to in the tutorial are now fixed.