[GUI Plugin] FanFicFare

[Tharos]

I'm not sure if it's because of the latest test version. But if I only update the metadata of a story via the website, the number of chapters in FFN is ignored and not updated. The number of words, for example, is recorded correctly.

Example 1: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/1420544...nting-Melodies
Example 2: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14427052/1/Harry-Uchiha

On other pages (tested on AO3) it still works.

[JimmXinu]

ffnet is broken. The site isn't giving the full list of chapter for some stories. Note that FFF uses the list of chapters, not the number of chapters when counting chapters.

Your first example, the first page only shows 405 chapters and the second example only 1.

To save typing, here's link to the last time it came up.

[MondSemmel]

I really like the epub output for Royal Road (some tools struggled to preserve e.g. italicized text formatting), but I'd like to preserve an author's center-aligned text, and none of my attempts so far have worked.

Example from this chapter): text with a dynamically generated class and a style="text-align: center" CSS attribute.

What I've tried:
1)

[www.royalroad.com]
add_to_keep_html_attrs:,align

<-> Doesn't work, but then again, it's not an HTML tag.

2)

[epub]
add_to_output_css:
 p[style*="text-align: center"] { text-align: center !important; }

3)

## Outright overwrite output_css by removing the "text-align: justify" part from "body":
[epub]
output_css:
 body { background-color: #%(background_color)s;
        margin: 2%%;
	adobe-hyphenate: none; }
 [...]

---
I would be thankful for any advice.
PS: Any time I want to test a change to personal.ini, I currently delete and then redownload the entire fic. Is there a way to test settings, e.g. by downloading a single chapter, rather than an entire fic?

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

To save typing, here's link to the last time it came up.

For what it matters, check_next_chapter and meta_from_last_chapter didn't work. I eventually got it though, just keep trying and hope you get lucky.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by MondSemmel

I really like the epub output for Royal Road (some tools struggled to preserve e.g. italicized text formatting), but I'd like to preserve an author's center-aligned text, and none of my attempts so far have worked.

Example from this chapter): text with a dynamically generated class and a style="text-align: center" CSS attribute.

That story is using an inline style attribute to set the text-align--and a bunch of other stuff. Certain programs, typically word processors, use very brute force methods to apply appearance on HTML export.

<p class="cnM1MmYxOGU4ZjBiNjQzNTBiMTEwYjJkNjA2MzYzMDMz" style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-indent: 0; text-transform: none; word-spacing: 0; text-decoration: none; margin: 0 0 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-family: Charter"><span style="font-family: &quot;Open Sans&quot;, sans-serif">Lexi</span></p>

Instead of align, you need to keep the style attr:

[www.royalroad.com]
add_to_keep_html_attrs:,style

## or by story:
[https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/63759]
add_to_keep_html_attrs:,style

And I don't have any good way to keep part of an in-line style.

Originally Posted by MondSemmel

PS: Any time I want to test a change to personal.ini, I currently delete and then redownload the entire fic. Is there a way to test settings, e.g. by downloading a single chapter, rather than an entire fic?

You can put a chapter number range after the URL when downloading by URL, or a single chapter. The example above would be:

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/63759[197]

(Note that FFF's chapter number doesn't always line up if the author had a prologue or something.)

But you have to do download by URL every time. There are undocumented settings first_chapter and last_chapter you can put in personal.ini for a specific story that will act as if you'd used the chapter range.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

For what it matters, check_next_chapter and meta_from_last_chapter didn't work. I eventually got it though, just keep trying and hope you get lucky.

That's true.

What check_next_chapter and meta_from_last_chapter do in that case is give you 1 or 2 additional chances by letting you look at different chapters for the metadata.

[Clem2605]

Originally Posted by JimmXinu

I haven't tested it, but something like this maybe?

 characters,ships,ships_CHARS=>(?i)(Adrien Agreste)?( \| )?(Chat Noir)?=>Adrien

Be careful, in my experience, this should also pick up the places where there are strings of 'nothing' so, for example, 'zzz' would become something like 'AdrienzAdrienzAdrienzAdrien', because every part is rendered optional by the '?'

characters,ships,ships_CHARS=>(?i)^Adrien Agreste \| Chat Noir$|^Adrien Agreste$|^Chat Noir$=>Adrien

or

characters=>(?i).*Adrien Agreste.*|.*Chat Noir.*=>Adrien

Would be better solutions.

| without the '\' is an 'OR' which means that it will match any of the options on either side if it detect them.

^ and $ match the beginning and the end of a tag, this solution wouldn't match anything else than the three tags 'Adrien Agreste \| Chat Noir', 'Adrien Agreste' and 'Chat Noir'.

.* will match any and all characters before and after the names, which means that both '.*Adrien Agreste.*' and '.*Chat Noir.*' should match the full canonical tag and respectively match any character tag that contains those words.
You shouldn't use that with the ships though because it will match the whole ship tag, not just one side of the '/'.

Use

characters,ships,ships_CHARS=>(?i)[^\/&]*Adrien Agreste[^\/&]*|[^\/&]*Chat Noir[^\/&]*=>Adrien

If you want to also apply the second solution to the ships metadata.
[^\/&amp;]* will match any and all characters that aren't '/' or '&'. The 'amp;' part is here for FFF to recognize that it is a '&' and not a special character, leaving it out will result in bugs in FFF's code.

[booster-t]

Well, here's a new problem, sort of, as it is starting to happen more and more. FFN refuses to download. Please see attached image. It's a 403 error.

Stephen

[JimmXinu]

New Test Version Posted

2025-03-24
- Improve logpage updating
- Implementing Timed One Time Password(TOTP) 2FA Exception and collection

I noticed logpage wasn't correctly updating when description contained <span> tags. This should fix it in most cases, including with custom logpage_entry.

dbhmw suggested a way to handle TOTP 2FA on the CLI mailing list; and while I didn't implement it the way they suggested, I have added TOTP 2FA for:

• storiesonline.net
• finestories.com
• scifistories.com
• alternatehistory.com
• QQ
• SV
• SB
• the-sietch.com

Those sites all share only two code bases. Any other supported site that can allow TOTP 2FA will need to be considered and implemented separately.

You can still have username/password in personal.ini and only enter the TOTP code as needed.

Note that you *cannot* use the Background Metadata update option with TOTP.

[k7oamam0t0]

okay i tried the browser cache for ao3 on https://archiveofourown.org/series/3138789

and got Error in FFF 'Page not found or expired in Browser Cache (see FFF setting browser_cache_age_limit)'(428) URL:'https://archiveofourown.org/users/login'

with this in the full

Spoiler:

calibre, version 8.0.1
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>HTTPErrorFFF</b>:HTTP Error in FFF 'Page not found or expired in Browser Cache (see FFF setting browser_cache_age_limit)'(428) URL:'https://archiveofourown.org/users/login'

calibre 8.0.1 embedded-python: True
Windows-10-10.0.26100-SP0 Windows ('64bit', 'WindowsPE')
('Windows', '10', '10.0.26100')
Python 3.11.5
Windows: ('10', '10.0.26100', 'SP0', 'Multiprocessor Free')
Interface language: None
EXE path: C:\Program Files\Calibre2\calibre.exe
Successfully initialized third party plugins: Gather KFX-ZIP (from KFX Input) (2, 22, 0) && Package KFX (from KFX Input) (2, 22, 0) && EpubMerge (3, 2, 0) && FanFicFare (4, 43, 0) && KFX metadata reader (from KFX Input) (2, 22, 0) && From KFX (2, 22, 0) && KFX Input (2, 22, 0)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre_plugins.fanficfare_plugin.fff_plugin" , line 991, in update_anthology
File "calibre_plugins.fanficfare_plugin.fff_plugin" , line 733, in get_urls_from_page
File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\Fa nFicFare.zip\fanficfare\geturls.py", line 44, in get_urls_from_page
File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\Fa nFicFare.zip\fanficfare\adapters\base_adapter.py", line 474, in get_urls_from_page
File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\Fa nFicFare.zip\fanficfare\adapters\base_otw_adapter. py", line 608, in before_get_urls_from_page
File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\Fa nFicFare.zip\fanficfare\adapters\base_otw_adapter. py", line 122, in performLogin
File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\Fa nFicFare.zip\fanficfare\requestable.py", line 102, in post_request
File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\Fa nFicFare.zip\fanficfare\fetchers\base_fetcher.py", line 124, in post_request
File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\Fa nFicFare.zip\fanficfare\fetchers\cache_basic.py", line 122, in fetcher_do_request
File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\Fa nFicFare.zip\fanficfare\fetchers\decorators.py", line 102, in fetcher_do_request
File "C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\Fa nFicFare.zip\fanficfare\fetchers\cache_browser.py" , line 110, in fetcher_do_request
fanficfare.exceptions.HTTPErrorFFF: HTTP Error in FFF 'Page not found or expired in Browser Cache (see FFF setting browser_cache_age_limit)'(428) URL:'https://archiveofourown.org/users/login'

what am i doing wrong here?

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by k7oamam0t0

okay i tried the browser cache for ao3 on https://archiveofourown.org/series/3138789

and got Error in FFF 'Page not found or expired in Browser Cache (see FFF setting browser_cache_age_limit)'(428) URL:'https://archiveofourown.org/users/login'

Turn off setting always_login. POST requests aren't cached and can't work with BrowserCache.

[texasnightowl]

since this is fanficfare related, I'm going to ask here...in regards to AO3...what seems to give the better result...FanFicFare or using AO3's entire work > download epub option? Thoughts? I haven't done an in depth study so far. Curious if anyone has.

[XRoverMaelstromX]

Originally Posted by texasnightowl

since this is fanficfare related, I'm going to ask here...in regards to AO3...what seems to give the better result...FanFicFare or using AO3's entire work > download epub option? Thoughts? I haven't done an in depth study so far. Curious if anyone has.

It depends on your priorities, under normal circumstances. Currently, with Ao3's server issues, FFF is struggling a little with it's normal functionality, so I've been downloading using Ao3's download option for things I'm especially worried about losing a copy of, but as soon as the servers are updated I'm going to re-download everything through FFF.

FFF, in it's totally unmodified form, if you do nothing to customize it and just install the plugin and run with it, creates a totally readable ebook but the metadata can be kind messy both in how it populates into Calibre and how it generates on the title page of the ebook. So, if you prioritize not having to mess around with customizing FFF and Calibre above everything else, just using Ao3's download option will give you a better result because that option lays out the title page like it looks on Ao3 and is therefore neater.

However, if you prioritize having the metadata for the fic show up automatically in Calibre, having the workskin stay attached to the epub, being able to download more than one story at a time (either individually or automatically bundling several into a single epub), and probably other things that I'm not thinking of just off the top of my head, then FFF is hands down the better option under normal circumstances.

If you're struggling with customizing it I wrote up a guide that walks you step by step through what I've done with mine, which I'm happy to link if there's interest, or there's this thread, the r/Calibre subreddit, the GitHub FAQ, and a spinoff thread here on MobileRead specifically about the replace metadata function as resources to help you get it sorted out so that downloaded fics come out to your liking.

[JimmXinu]

All I would add is that last I checked, AO3's download doesn't include images and FFF's does--except cases where the image hosting site prevents it (notably imgur).

[wildfire070]

Speaking of image downloads via FFF, are the images embedded into the epub itself? I haven't been using the "polish" function on calibre, but one of the options is for it to download external resources:

Download external resources such as images, stylesheets, etc. that point to URLs instead of files in the book. All such resources will be downloaded and added to the book so that the book no longer references any external resources.

Does FFF already do that with downloaded fics or do I need to start implementing the "polish" function into my workflow to prevent losing images from authors taking it down or broken URLs?

Another question: I'm currently trying the browser cache workaround to download from AO3. Should I have "use_view_full_work:true" enabled or disabled?