Calibre Server Questions

[BetterRed]

I've never taken more than a cursory glance at calibre server, because until now I had no use for it. Now I think I do have a use for it.

But what I'd like is a combination of the category select by Author, Publisher, etc but with a presentation style more like Mobile.

Any ideas?

A related query, does anyone happen to know of a way I can get Windows to open a url in a nominated browser rather than the default browser - i.e. in Chrome rather than Firefox (default).

BR

[darryl]

I won't touch your first question. As to your second one, a desktop shortcut with an appropriate command should do the trick.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I've never taken more than a cursory glance at calibre server, because until now I had no use for it. Now I think I do have a use for it.

But what I'd like is a combination of the category select by Author, Publisher, etc but with a presentation style more like Mobile.

Any ideas?

A related query, does anyone happen to know of a way I can get Windows to open a url in a nominated browser rather than the default browser - i.e. in Chrome rather than Firefox (default).

BR

BR you can type a standard Calibre search term into the search box in 'Mobile' (or regular)
I just recently learned this bit.


Wont Windows 'Open With' work on URL's? OK it no workee in firefox
There used to be a firefox PI Open in IE (for those IE only sites ). Mybe there is a chrome version of the PI

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by darryl

I won't touch your first question. As to your second one, a desktop shortcut with an appropriate command should do the trick.

@darryl - I think you're right, just after I posted I did a search and this popped up Create shortcut to open URL in non-default browser

My mind was set on having a regular URI, but the place I want to paste it allows for file embedding, so...



That's plenty good enough for me.

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by theducks

BR you can type a standard Calibre search term into the search box in 'Mobile' (or regular)
I just recently learned this bit.


Wont Windows 'Open With' work on URL's? OK it no workee in firefox
There used to be a firefox PI Open in IE (for those IE only sites ). Mybe there is a chrome version of the PI

@theducks - I want to drive the server from Evernote (EN) not the keyboard.

Its the next stage of my Calibre and Evernote project. As you'll see there I'm already driving EN from Author Links, the next step is to drive calibre (via the web server) from EN.

Imagine I clip something about Hilary Mantel into Evernote from the LRB. A link to the clip will inevitably find its way into my Hilary Mantel 'note'. In the clipping I see there is mention of The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher and I ask myself - do I have that book?

So I click on the Here are the Books "file" in the Hilary Mantel note, and Chrome will show the list of Hilary Mantel's books I have in my library - when I see the book isn't there then I'll do something about getting it.

Yes, that's a trite example as Mantel hasn't written that many books. But most of my authors aren't fiction writers, they're journalists and other such pundits, they churn out articles, stories and press releases like my butcher does sausages.

BR

[eschwartz]

Well, I would have just gone with "firefox http://www.example.com/somepage.html" to begin with.

As far as clicking a link in one browser that opens in another browser, I wasn't aware that any platform can do this.

Although you could probably rig up your own URI scheme to do it... then you have to package it and install everywhere you want to use it.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Well, I would have just gone with "firefox http://www.example.com/somepage.html" to begin with.

As far as clicking a link in one browser that opens in another browser, I wasn't aware that any platform can do this.

Although you could probably rig up your own URI scheme to do it... then you have to package it and install everywhere you want to use it.

@eschwartz - yes I have to post the urls to the relevant calibre-server pages somewhere - but I already have the places to do that - the EN notes whose evernote:///blah blah links I have in all my Author Links fields etc.

I didn't actually say I wanted to open the link in one browser from another browser - what I said was "anyone know a way I can get Windows to open a url in a nominated browser rather than the default browser.

darryl answered the question correctly... "a desktop shortcut with an appropriate command should do the trick."

Then I posted a link to detailed instructions on how to build the shortcut file, with the observation that the application I want to host the link, can also host file attachments - such as a .lnk file. That application is the Evernote Windows client.

So I drop the .lnk file into the appropriate EN note, then at some time in the future I can click the .lnk file in the note, EN will pass it off to Windows, which will pass it off to Chrome, which will pop the relevant calibre server page, thus leaving my workhorse browser, Firefox, alone.

So that part of my question is complete, to proof of concept stage. However this part is outstanding

...what I'd like is a combination of the category select by Author, Publisher, etc but with a presentation style more like Mobile.

Any ideas?

But that's not critical because its about form rather than function, in my narrow little world the latter always trumps the former

BR

[eschwartz]

Ah, I misread your post.

Regarding category select, you can do standard calibre searches in the mobile server view.

I assume you are building all the links yourself, or generating them somehow, for each selection criteria -- not using the actual server page?
You just need to pass a parameter to http://127.0.0.1:8080/mobile?search=%s for a search that would fit into the search bar in the calibre GUI.

[BetterRed]

@eschwartz - Ah, so I changed the threat name from Calibre Server Queries to ...Questions

Initiating a search from within EN would probably require me to delve into the quagmire of the EN API, I'm not prepared to do that just to get a bit better look from the calibre server. And I did say "...a presentation style more like Mobile".

Ideally I would like something exactly like the calibre desktop book list, covers are largely irrelevant to me, I don't imagine the USSC will be putting covers on its opinions any time soon

I think the urls are based on database row numbers, I am very careful about creating new authors, publishers etc. That all happens before the books get into the library I'd be accessing via calibre-server.

My original plan is done. I wanted to replace the Author and Book Info folder links I had in Author Link and Book notes with links to EN Author and Book Notes. I now have ~15% of the Author and Book info folders I had. The opportunity exists to get rid of the ~15%, but I'm being cautious about attaching large files, there are various limits to EN Free and they're a bit on the lean side.

But all that was surprisingly easy to do. So I decided to see if I could get some backlinking from EN to calibre happening, All I want is lists of books - equivalent of Alt/A, Alt/P etc. I dived down the 'convert csv catalogues into html tables' rabbit hole, but getting them into a form where I could shoehorn them into an EN note proved to be both problematic and cumbersome.

So I changed tack to the calibre server idea. I have a command line utility (xxmklink) to create the shortcut files so I think I can create the .lnk files en-masse - the tricky bit will be to attach them to the right entity notes, but I have an inkling of how I might do that.

My database is pretty stable entity wise. And if it doesn't work out then no harm done, as I'm not throwing any data away.

BR

[eschwartz]

http://127.0.0.1:8080/browse/book/{book_id}

But I cannot find anything like that in Mobile view.

[BetterRed]

@eschwartz - at this stage I want lists of books not a single book.

Forget mobile view, I want default view functionality but terser presentation, I can get the detail via the Details link.

In default view I can have something like http colon //127.0.0.1:8080/browse/matches/authors/31

The 31 is the id of the author in the Author table. So I can create a csv from the Authors Table containing name and id, and then use the csv as the basis for creating the .lnk files via xxmklink. Where id is used in creating the url to pass to Chrome.exe, and name is used as the basis of naming the .lnk file

The .lnk files are sent to EN's autoadd folder. Then its simply matter of dragging the name.lnk file from the Newnotes notebook to the name note in the Authors Notebook. I think I saw mention of a Merge capability in EN - so I may not even need to do that.

Basically its working, needs more testing but...

I think I read a post from Kovid in which he said he was giving thought to enhancing calibre-server, even allowing metadata editing from there. Maybe he can squeeze in a no-frills book list presentation style for me - Author, Title, Publisher and Published is probably all I need

BR