Custom column built from word count column

[Montana Harper]

I'd love to be able to use my word count column to populate a column with a pre-defined name based on the length of the book, e.g., 40k+ words = Novel, 17,500 to 39,999 words = Novella, etc.

I've already got the word count column (using the Count Pages plug-in), but I can't figure out the syntax for the template, or even if what I'm trying to do is actually possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

TIA!

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Montana Harper

I'd love to be able to use my word count column to populate a column with a pre-defined name based on the length of the book, e.g., 40k+ words = Novel, 17,500 to 39,999 words = Novella, etc.

I've already got the word count column (using the Count Pages plug-in), but I can't figure out the syntax for the template, or even if what I'm trying to do is actually possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

TIA!

The first_matching_cmp function should do the trick - see ==>>Template Language: Relational functions

BR

[davidfor]

I wrote a template for that a while ago in a discussion on the Kobo forum. See this post. I don't actually use it as a column, but use a slightly modified version to set colours based on the type.

And looking at it now, using first_matching_cmp, would be better:

program: 
words=raw_field('#words');
shelf_name=first_matching_cmp(words, 7500, 'Short Story',  17500, 'Novelette', 40000, 'Novella', 'Novel');

I haven't tested it, but it should be right.

[Montana Harper]

Thank you both! I got it working exactly as I wanted.



The documentation is a bit lacking in information about how to use general program mode with custom columns, so I wanted to note—for the benefit of future information seekers—that even though it doesn't look like the program is properly formatted when you paste it from a text editor into the template field when creating a custom column, if it saves properly it should work...assuming the program syntax is correct, of course!

My final template:

program:
words=raw_field('#words');
length=first_matching_cmp(words,
     1,'UNCOUNTED',
     1001,'Flashfic',
     7500,'Short Story',
     17500,'Novelette',
     40000,'Novella',
     70000,'Short Novel',
     180000,'Novel',
     'Novel Plus')

This flags entries with empty word-count fields as UNCOUNTED, so I know I need to run the Count Pages plugin on them (rather than assigning the label Flashfic to them, which would be incorrect).