[GUI Plugin] Goodreads Sync

[bigbird1227]

Looking to import Goodreads ratings to a custom Calibre column.

I wonder if it is possible to do. I frequently use their ratings as a guide and have created a column whereby I will input the rating manually for a book that I have looked up. Helps me find good reads and also to avoid bad reads

If this could be automated it would be greatly appreciated

[kiwidude]

@bigbird1227 - you should be able to do this already with this plugin. Just choose your rating column on the first configuration page, then setup your sync action for each shelf you want to import from by ticking the checkbox to sync the rating from goodreads in your sync settings for that shelf.

Though that is your own rating for the book on goodreads. If you want the goodreads rating, then you need to use the Goodreads metadata plugin. However it is not possible to import into a custom column from a metadata plugin, so you would need to switch around your usage of rating columns.

[tarisea]

Good evening, I just noticed something interesting. On the Goodreads Sync Plugin the customize section gives the option of "Always Overwrite Calibre ISBN Value". Amazon Kindle books don't display an ISBN they only show an ASIN which is recognized in Goodreads. That's where the disconnect is between Format and IDS. Is there a way to get the plugin to overwrite Amazon ID with ASIN where available?

[mfaine]

Originally Posted by auspex

@mfaine I'm only suggesting you do this to get the shelf created initially - otherwise, we do have two-way syncing, as long as the shelf actually exists.

Good to know. So to be clear, the only thing that isn't sync'd are tags created in Calibre?

[auspex]

Originally Posted by mfaine

Good to know. So to be clear, the only thing that isn't sync'd are tags created in Calibre?

As far as i can tell - I'm still pretty new to the plugin

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by mfaine

Good to know. So to be clear, the only thing that isn't sync'd are tags created in Calibre?

In reality the *only* thing that gets "synced" is:
(1) a goodreads identifier for a book in calibre being associated with particular shelve(s) in your user account
(2) optionally the date read, rating and comments.

There is no "syncing" of any other data about a book (e.g. title, author, series etc) - that is all "metadata download" and in the realm of the Goodreads metadata download plugin only currently (or Import List plugin) - and even then that is one way.

The "Upload tags as shelves" feature in this plugin is purely about allowing you to use a shelf name as a tag for a book, to then assign it to goodreads, rather than using the right-click "Add to shelf" option to choose the shelf. The question by the OP concerning this related only to the fact that if you use a tag name that doesn't exist as a shelf, the plugin will not create a shelf for it. I'm still not convinced about it being an option I want to offer, because people use tags for lots of reasons other than just genre (such as indicating it is a wishlist item, whether they have read it etc) or indeed if they used tags from Google they will have potentially thousands of different ones. Which there is no way in heck you want to be creating Goodreads shelves for each one. It is entirely probable the OP is more disciplined and has a limited number of tags that they really do want to be shelves, but not every user will work that way. So it isn't a piece of work I'm currently queueing up to do...

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by tarisea

Good evening, I just noticed something interesting. On the Goodreads Sync Plugin the customize section gives the option of "Always Overwrite Calibre ISBN Value". Amazon Kindle books don't display an ISBN they only show an ASIN which is recognized in Goodreads. That's where the disconnect is between Format and IDS. Is there a way to get the plugin to overwrite Amazon ID with ASIN where available?

Not from memory, it is to do with how the goodreads API works. They have some functions this plugin uses that are ISBN focused.

[auspex]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

In reality the *only* thing that gets "synced" is:
(1) a goodreads identifier for a book in calibre being associated with particular shelve(s) in your user account
(2) optionally the date read, rating and comments.

There is no "syncing" of any other data about a book (e.g. title, author, series etc) - that is all "metadata download" and in the realm of the Goodreads metadata download plugin only currently (or Import List plugin) - and even then that is one way.

That doesn't seem right: Title and Author DO sync - if I don't have them in Calibre, I can choose "Add to Calibre" and it creates them (with the series) - and of course, if they _do_ exist in Calibre, it tries to match them (though I do have a bug to report about that much, if I can figure out the real problems - I get an "invalid float" error when I try to sync my "books-i-own" shelf, where very few of the books exist in Calibre and I want to create "empty" books).

Anyway, once I get a match between my Goodreads shelves and Calibre I can do a metadata download to get anything else.

I also don't think "date read, rating and comments" are optional - if I omit the first two, I'm unable to sync at all - the shelf doesn't appear in the Sync options.

[auspex]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

The "Upload tags as shelves" feature in this plugin is purely about allowing you to use a shelf name as a tag for a book, to then assign it to goodreads, rather than using the right-click "Add to shelf" option to choose the shelf. The question by the OP concerning this related only to the fact that if you use a tag name that doesn't exist as a shelf, the plugin will not create a shelf for it. I'm still not convinced about it being an option I want to offer, because people use tags for lots of reasons other than just genre

Where's the problem? You have to map tags->shelves anyway - so if you have a tag for which you don't want a shelf to be created, you just don't map it.

And the other thing that you're still missing is that "Shelf" (in goodreads) has nothing (explicitly) to do with genre. In Goodreads, they are tags. I don't want all of my tags to be set in my e-reader as Shelves (as can be done with the Kobo driver) but I pretty much want all of my Calibre tags to be Goodreads shelves - but again, if you don't, you just don't map them.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by auspex

That doesn't seem right: Title and Author DO sync - if I don't have them in Calibre, I can choose "Add to Calibre" and it creates them (with the series)

That has nothing whatsoever to do with the Goodreads Sync plugin. This plugin does *not* change title/author in and of itself.

Anyway, once I get a match between my Goodreads shelves and Calibre I can do a metadata download to get anything else.

Yes that part is true - but that is what I said above - the Goodreads metadata plugin is used to download metadata about a book.

I also don't think "date read, rating and comments" are optional - if I omit the first two, I'm unable to sync at all - the shelf doesn't appear in the Sync options.

You have to have "some" rule in order to setup a shelf to sync. However that rule does *not* have to be one of date read, rating or comments. You can setup a rule to set a value in a custom column instead, for instance to set a #read yes/no column to "Yes" if the books is on your "read" shelf in goodreads.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by auspex

And the other thing that you're still missing is that "Shelf" (in goodreads) has nothing (explicitly) to do with genre. In Goodreads, they are tags. I don't want all of my tags to be set in my e-reader as Shelves (as can be done with the Kobo driver) but I pretty much want all of my Calibre tags to be Goodreads shelves - but again, if you don't, you just don't map them.

I'm not "missing" anything when it comes to shelves vs genre vs tags. Nowhere does this plugin insist that a shelf has to be for a particular purpose.

[auspex]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

That has nothing whatsoever to do with the Goodreads Sync plugin. This plugin does *not* change title/author in and of itself.

It doesn't change them - but it certainly sets them when you create a new Calibre entry. Now, you might argue that's not part of the sync - but I add a new Entry from within the sync plugin, even if it isn't actually your plugin that does the work. Please don't tell me I'm wrong again, because I've been doing this ALL night, and I still have 400 odd entries to go, because if I don't do just a subset of the missing books, I always get this error:

calibre, version 0.9.14
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>ValueError</b>:invalid literal for float(): 1,2

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "calibre_plugins.goodreads_sync.dialogs", line 1859, in sync_button_clicked
  File "calibre_plugins.goodreads_sync.dialogs", line 1839, in _create_empty_books
ValueError: invalid literal for float(): 1,2

You have to have "some" rule in order to setup a shelf to sync. However that rule does *not* have to be one of date read, rating or comments. You can setup a rule to set a value in a custom column instead, for instance to set a #read yes/no column to "Yes" if the books is on your "read" shelf in goodreads.

I do have a rule - I started with the defaults of date read, rating & comments, but got the above error. So I tried removing "date read" as many of these books didn't have one. That made no difference, so I removed "rating", and then I couldn't sync that shelf - even though it was still supposed to be syncing comments. So I added another rule to set "date read" to None, and I was able to sync the shelf again - including the comments! So, yes, "date read" & "ratings" are optional as long as you provide a fourth rule - but you can't just have "comments"

[auspex]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

I'm not "missing" anything when it comes to shelves vs genre vs tags. Nowhere does this plugin insist that a shelf has to be for a particular purpose.

Then what's the problem with having the plugin upload all matched tags as shelves, even if the shelf doesn't already exist?

I'm sorry if I've upset you, but you've repeatedly said you don't really understand the Shelf usage (and don't use it at all yourself), and you still don't seem to.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by auspex

Then what's the problem with having the plugin upload all matched tags as shelves, even if the shelf doesn't already exist?

I have already stated above exactly what the problem is with the plugin uploading all tags as shelves. Anyone who has used the Google plugin to download tags will have hundreds of the damn things, representing character names, places, dozens of variants of sci-fi/science fiction/sf, etc etc. Apart from transferring that same dogs bollocks of a mess onto goodreads it would also flood their API with calls, which goodreads have very strict constraints about the volume that can be made. So to ensure the plugin does not get blocked it has always taken the approach of a middle ground to satisfy the majority. And this is *not* a majority feature.

I'm sorry if I've upset you, but you've repeatedly said you don't really understand the Shelf usage (and don't use it at all yourself), and you still don't seem to.

Is this sort of repeated arrogant, antagonistic comment supposed to be helpful at all? The main feature I don't use of this plugin myself nowadays is "upload tags as shelves". I do take objection to someone who has only just discovered the plugin repeatedly stating to the developer who has spent hundreds of hours developing and supporting it that I "don't understand" what goodreads shelves are for. Just because I have no desire to invest even more time to add a feature to this plugin because I don't see it generally useful (given that in the thousands of users not one other person had brought it up as a requirement in two years of usage) does not mean that I "don't understand shelves".

And yes I would argue that creating empty books is not a "sync" of data, in regards to the question the other poster made. A sync implies that data will get overwritten, and in the case of title/author this plugin will *not* get overwritten. The book in calibre can have completely different values from the matched book on your shelf. So book metadata is not "synced", however you are correct in saying that you can use this plugin to create new books in calibre that do match their goodreads equivalent.

As for the invalid float error, I haven't seen that reported elsewhere, so I will take a look into that at some point.

[auspex]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

I have already stated above exactly what the problem is with the plugin uploading all tags as shelves. Anyone who has used the Google plugin to download tags will have hundreds of the damn things, representing character names, places, dozens of variants of sci-fi/science fiction/sf, etc etc.

Why would that be? If we were actually using tags in any meaningful way, we'd have used the "Manage tags" feature to ensure we didn't have dozens of tags representing the same thing, and the "Delete" feature to ensure that the pointless ones were done away with.

Apart from transferring that same dogs bollocks of a mess onto goodreads it could also flood their API with calls,

Agreed, you don't want to issue too many API calls, and I'm certainly not one of those people who'll have a snit if you don't want to implement a feature I would like (and I've already said to mfaine that I _don't_ consider this necessary, either). I merely pointed out that there was no requirement for ALL those Calibre tags to actually get turned into Shelves, anyway.

Is this sort of repeated arrogant, antagonistic comment supposed to be helpful at all?

Wow. I'm sure I must have done something to deserve that! I apologized for upsetting you, for heavens sake! I honestly did think you seemed to be having a problem - you've pointed out more than once that you don't use GR shelves, after all.

As for the invalid float error, I haven't seen that reported elsewhere, so I will take a look into that at some point.

Well, since you don't like constructive criticism, I shan't bother to continue with what I've learned about that error.