How to Run Any (Non-GUI) Plugin From the Command Line?

[billalive]

Hi! First off, thank you for all your work on Calibre, and for making it open-source. A truly fantastic tool.

Is it possible to run all or most plugins from the command line?

For instance, I would like to export my BibTeX catalog from the command line.

That plugin code seems to live here:

https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibr...logs/bibtex.py

So I thought I might do something like:

calibre-debug /usr/lib/calibre/calibre/library/catalogs/bibtex.py -- --verbose --citation-template "{author}-{title}-{pubdate}"

However, nothing happens.

I suspect that I need to execute the actual run() function in this plugin, and this would probably be a fairly trivial Python script.

But is there already an idiom for running a Calibre plugin like this from the command line?

Thank you!

[kovidgoyal]

calibredb catalog -h

[billalive]

Excellent! Thank you for such a quick reply.

This command definitely meets my specific need. I can generate a BibTeX catalog with:

calibredb catalog calibre.bib --with-library ~/Calibre/ --entry-type=mixed --citation-template="{author_sort}-{title}-{pubdate}" --sort-by=author_sort

And there are more options for bibtex files:

calibredb catalog calibre.bib -h

So that is great.

For other plugins, does this mean that there is no general way to run any non-GUI plugin from the command line? Again, I'm sure it is doable with a short Python script that loads the module and uses the run() function. But I wanted to check first to see if there is already a command for this.

Thank you!

[capink]

Calibre does provide GUI plugins with an API to run in command line mode. For plugins that implements such and API users are supposed to invoke it with the command:

calibre-debug -r "Plugin Name"

However, I do not know of a single GUI plugin that actually implement this. So, the only way for you is to prey open the code, and figure out how to wrap the functionality in a script that runs from the command line.

[billalive]

Thanks, @capink! I believe that "calibre-debug -r" is exactly what I was looking for.

My main concern is being able to run non GUI plugins, so this command should be perfect. "calibre-debug -h" had all the details; I should have looked more carefully:

-r RUN_PLUGIN, --run-plugin=RUN_PLUGIN
Run a plugin that provides a command line interface.
For example:
calibre-debug -r "Plugin name" -- file1 --option1
Everything after the -- will be passed to the plugin
as arguments.

Thanks again!

[DaltonST]

Originally Posted by capink

Calibre does provide GUI plugins with an API to run in command line mode. For plugins that implements such and API users are supposed to invoke it with the command:

calibre-debug -r "Plugin Name"

However, I do not know of a single GUI plugin that actually implement this. So, the only way for you is to prey open the code, and figure out how to wrap the functionality in a script that runs from the command line.

Actually, the CalibreSpy GUI plugin is supposed to be normally run from the command line so multiple Libraries can be viewed simultaneously without the Calibre GUI being executed at all.


DaltonST