Publisher count

[Comfy.n]

Hi chaley,

This is mostly out of curiosity as I'm exploring the Template functions.

I'm using the plugin Author Book Count to populate a column that stores the total number of books by each author while also providing an optional integer column that supports arithmetic search queries, named abc_numeric (I have a grouped search using 'abc' as lookup alias instead). So I sometimes do searches like

not abc:=1

Now I was thinking of creating a similar column for Publisher and I found that using...

program: book_count('publisher',0);

...doesn't work, so my query is incorrect.

Would you please advise a good way to create such a column?

(I have already set the tweak allow_template_database_functions_in_composites to True.)

[chaley]

The correct query is

program: book_count('publisher:=' & $publisher & '"', 0)

This template could be too slow to use in a composite column. You can use it in action chains to set the count.

This python template should be fast enough to use directly in a composite

python:
def evaluate(book, context):
	db = context.db.new_api
	pub_id = db.field_ids_for('publisher', book.id)
	if not pub_id:
		return '0'
	pub_id = pub_id[0]
	counts = db.get_usage_count_by_id('publisher')
	return str(counts[pub_id])

[Comfy.n]

The python template is fast enough, thank you! I think I'm going to keep it for a while to see how it goes.