Importing Metadata from .bib or MySQL Database

[Hazeldor]

Hello all,

I have a large collection of ebooks for research that I was previously managing with JabRef locally on my PC. I am moving these to my iPAD with Calibre and Stanza. My question is: I have a large amount of metadata ready in a JabRef .bib database file. How can I import this information into Calibre when I add books from my collection? Is there an appropriate plugin for example? Jabref allows me to export to an external database such as MySQL so if there is a way to get metadata from a custom MySQL database that would work for me equally well.

I am interested in fields like Series, Edition, Editors as well as the standard author and publisher fields.

Many thanks for any help you can giive me on what looks like a great piece of software!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Hazeldor

Hello all,

I have a large collection of ebooks for research that I was previously managing with JabRef locally on my PC. I am moving these to my iPAD with Calibre and Stanza. My question is: I have a large amount of metadata ready in a JabRef .bib database file. How can I import this information into Calibre when I add books from my collection? Is there an appropriate plugin for example? Jabref allows me to export to an external database such as MySQL so if there is a way to get metadata from a custom MySQL database that would work for me equally well.

I am interested in fields like Series, Edition, Editors as well as the standard author and publisher fields.

Many thanks for any help you can giive me on what looks like a great piece of software!

Welcome

You will have to do a bit of scripting
Look at the Command line interface:
http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/cli/calibredb.html

You might also review: the "Add from ISBN" ( little arrow next to add books) and see if the few options there would meed your needs.

[Hazeldor]

@theducks - Thank you very much for responding!

The scripting link looks very useful and probably the way to do it. Are there any ready-made scripting resources available, with basic stuff like accessing the calibre database, cycling through all the books etc... ? Just to avoid reinventing the wheel if you know what I mean.

I am running this from Windows and I am ok to use either perl or python to do the job.

Thanks again!

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by Hazeldor

The scripting link looks very useful and probably the way to do it. Are there any ready-made scripting resources available, with basic stuff like accessing the calibre database, cycling through all the books etc... ? Just to avoid reinventing the wheel if you know what I mean.

Searching the forum for "calibredb list" or something similar might give some useful results.

I am running this from Windows and I am ok to use either perl or python to do the job.

If you know what you're doing, you can use Python to directly call Calibre's code- this might be helpful, although you'd probably be safer just using the CLI tools.