Plugin update warning?

[DiapDealer]

I understand the desire for an "official" plugin update mechanism, but I feel our time is better spent (for now, at least) on core functionality. Maybe some day ... after the primary goals are accomplished.

[eschwartz]

@Kevin, @Diap,

Fair enough.
All I'm saying is, the mere need to host a plugin index shouldn't, in and of itself, be a major blocker.

And hey, while we are comparing calibre and Sigil, calibre didn't sprout a plugin updater overnight either.

[Toxaris]

I actually think what Kevin suggested is a very viable solution. The plugin creator(s) will deliver the updates, so why not make them responsible for a kind of update service? Especially when Kevin has been so generous to provide an example code. I am sure that shorter or other variants will pop-up now.
I understand, and agree with, the fact that the plug-in part is separate from Sigil and rightfully so.

[KevinH]

I added a Current Version: "0.3.4" line to my ePub3-itizer release page.

Then you could simplify things using regular expressions to be just:

from __future__ import unicode_literals, division, absolute_import, print_function

import sys
import os
import re

try:
    import urllib.request as url_request
except ImportError:
    import urllib2 as url_request


_latest_pattern = re.compile(r'Current Version:\s*"([^&]*)&')
_version_pattern = re.compile(r'<version>([^<]*)</version>')

def check_for_updates(site_url, plugin_path):
    latest_version = None
    installed_version = None

    try:
        # get the latest version from the plugin release website page
        req = url_request.Request(site_url)
        response = url_request.urlopen(req)
        the_page = response.read()
        the_page = the_page.decode('utf-8')
        m = _latest_pattern.search(the_page)
        if m:
            latest_version = (m.group(1).strip())

        # get installed version of plugin
        ppath = os.path.join(plugin_path, "plugin.xml")
        with open(ppath,'rb') as f:
            data = f.read()
            data = data.decode('utf-8')
            m = _version_pattern.search(data)
            if m:
                installed_version = m.group(1).strip()
    except:
        pass

    return latest_version, installed_version


SITE_URL = "https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2973066&postcount=1"
PLUGIN_PATH = "/Users/kbhend/Desktop"
latest_version, installed_version = check_for_updates(SITE_URL, PLUGIN_PATH)
print(latest_version, installed_version)

[BetterRed]

Off Topic two-penneth worth - I don't think the existing index lists all plugins (e.g. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=268279 ), also I would think there are enough plugins now to warrant having it in alphabetical order.

Could a convention be established such that threads in the Plugins subforum that contain a PI be prefixed with "[Plugin]", and could the 'title' that follows match the index entry, and the the zip file name. Hence, there would be a "[Plugin] Shady Characters" thread, listed in the index as "Shady Characters" and its zip name would be "ShadyCharacters-v??????.zip'.

Calibre is not the only software that informs user of updated PIs at run time. Notepad++ and browsers spring to mind. If MR provided RSS feeds for individual fora/subfora, then that would be my preferred notifier. That's how I get notified of updates to plugins for my file manager.

BR

[KevinH]

Well I have alphabetized the Plugin Index but I do not feel right editing other developers' plugin posts to change the title to "[Plugin] Something" so that is completely up to them.

The Plugin Index will help you find the proper post. As for missing plugins, I was under the impression based on the discussion in that thread that there was an easier way to handle that issue. If that is not the case and the author wants their post in the Plugin Index, I would be more than happy to add it.

KevinH

[DiapDealer]

After having to update the Plugin Index, I can tell you it's not THAT hard to keep things alphabetized, but if I ever have to renumber the whole thing again, those numbers are going to disappear.

[KevinH]

Feel free to remove them anytime! I only manually renumbered once and that was enough for me.

[eschwartz]

If you really want numbering, use
[LIST=1]
[*]
[*]
[*]
[*]
[/LIST]

It auto-numbers it, which is the only remotely sane way of numbering things.

[DiapDealer]

Sanity is overrated.

[CalibUser]

Following the suggestions made in this thread, I have updated my ePubTidyTool plugin so that it will check this website for updates.

The code is in a self-contained module called checkVersion.py and it uses the version of Beautiful Soup that is built into Sigil. Other plugin developers could, if they wished, extract this file from the zip plugin and use it in their own projects.

The plugin can be downloaded from:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...54#post3228354)

[Toxaris]

You could attach the checkVersion.py and it uses to the 'useful plugin code' sticky in the plugin part of the forum. That would make it easier on the developers and I guess that is what that thread is for.

Thanks anyway.

[KevinH]

Hi CalibUser,

Thanks for your checkVerrsion.py code. If you don't mind I would like to modify it to work under both python2.7 and python3.4 and explicitly handle the conversion to unicode/utf-8 to prevent confusion.

Is that okay? If so, I will then post the modified version to useful plugin code sticky for others to use.

Thanks,

KevinH

[CalibUser]

@KevinH

Originally Posted by KevinH

Thanks for your checkVersion.py code. If you don't mind I would like to modify it to work under both python2.7 and python3.4 and explicitly handle the conversion to unicode/utf-8 to prevent confusion.

Is that okay? If so, I will then post the modified version to useful plugin code sticky for others to use.

No problem

I had a vague idea that soup.prettify() converted the html to utf-8 but I this may not have been correct - I should have checked this.