[GUI Plugin] Overdrive Link

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

I can't use the "Set amazon identifier..." option. So, how about a tweak to allow us to use any identifier for that option?

It is easy to add a tweak for that. It will be in the next release of the plugin.

[LilyEvie]

I am getting an error with Bucks County

Spoiler:

Overdrive Link found: 1 error in searching. (click "View log" for details). 1 book/library link unchanged





Key: *=Discovered book, @=Available at, !=Recommendable at, $=Purchasable at, #=Audiobook

---------------- ERRORS WHILE SEARCHING ----------------

Signing in to buckscounty.OverDrive: : Server response error (Unknown OverDrive library website layout. Cannot access.)

-------------------- UNCHANGED LINKS ---------------------

Night's Pleasure by Ashley, Amanda (No links)





Starting job: Search for books by 1 author
Overdrive Link 1.43.0, calibre 2.67.0
Search formats: Adobe EPUB eBook, Adobe PDF eBook, Axis 360 Reader, BookReader, HTML eBook, Hoopla Book Reader, Hoopla Comic Reader, Kindle Book, MediaDo Reader, Mobipocket eBook, Online Reader, Open DjVu eBook, Open EPUB eBook, Open PDF eBook, OverDrive Read, Plain Text eBook, Protected DAISY eBook, Scribd Reader
Get http://buckslib.overdrive.com
Signing in to buckscounty.OverDrive: : Server response error (Unknown OverDrive library website layout. Cannot access.)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre_plugins.overdrive_link.jobs", line 1200, in sign_in
File "calibre_plugins.overdrive_link.overdrive", line 398, in sign_in
LibraryError: u'Unknown OverDrive library website layout. Cannot access.'

=================================================
Finding library books by Ashley, Amanda
Search buckscounty.OverDrive for all by amanda ashley
Found 0 books in 0.0 sec
=================================================
=================================================
Unmatched book (unchanged): Night's Pleasure by Ashley, Amanda
=================================================
Discovery of books by Ashley, Amanda is disallowed.
Checking 0 unmatched library books, 1 author

As this is the only site I seem to constantly have trouble with, they must change the layout of their website every other week.

Thank you for this great plug in.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by LilyEvie

I am getting an error with Bucks County

OverDrive is continuing to tweak their "new" site layout. The next release of the plugin will handle the change. It should be ready within a week.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by jhowell

It is easy to add a tweak for that. It will be in the next release of the plugin.

Thanks for the quick reply. I know this plugin is a lot of work (I've done apps that scrape ever-changing websites), but without it, I'd read a lot fewer library books. It makes my life so much easier than having to deal with manually searching a dozen websites.

[CyberCraftRobots]

Hi! I've installed this plugin and customized it with the libraries where I belong. I created an empty book and put in a title and author. Then I highlighted that book and went merrily to "Search for selected books" and "Search for selected books" is not among my menu choices. The help for setting up the libraries is so great, but the help for actually using the plug-in assumes... sumthin'... that I don't know. I'm new to calibre and I belong to 4 libraries (and each of their several book sources) so having this plugin work would really improve my life!!

What step am I missing?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by CyberCraftRobots

... "Search for selected books" is not among my menu choices. ... What step am I missing?

"Search for selected books" should be the first choice on the menu when you select a book and click the icon for the plugin. If you see "(Customize this plugin to enable search)" instead then you need to configure the plugin using the "Customize plugin" menu choice, near the bottom.

If you have already entered the information for one or more lending libraries in the table at the top of the configuration dialog, then most likely you did not enable any them for searching. You do this by clicking the empty box at the left of each row in the "Enabled" column.

[jhowell]

Version 2.0.0 - 16 Sep 2016

Separate the logic of finding new links from the removal of outdated links. Searches will now only add new links, never remove them (unless a current availability check is also done.) The configuration option to Unlink books if no longer found by search has been removed. Unchanged links will no longer be reported in the search results summary.

The Check current availability of selected books menu choice is now available even when the ol_wait_weeks custom column does not exist. Besides determining the wait to borrow, this will also check for books no longer available at the lending library and remove the link if so. All links are checked, even those for disabled libraries.

A new configuration option, Update current availability of books with new links will cause a check for the current availability/wait to be done for books whenever a new link is found by a search.

The Search for books by selected authors menu choice will now update links for all books by the same author(s) in the calibre library, even if they are not selected when the search is started.

Allow multiple search jobs to be active for the same set of books. Results may be inconsistent if the same books are updated in different ways.

The Unlink selected books menu choice now presents a submenu to allow more flexibility in link removal.

The overdrive_link_library_groups plugin tweak now enables a single menu choice, Set library group, that will select a group of libraries for subsequent searching.

In the Discovered Books dialog: The new Update button will match a single selected book to an existing calibre book, providing a list of suggested books to choose from. (Useful if a discovered book should actually match an existing calibre book, but failed to do so due to a mismatch in the title.) The new Discard Dupes button will mark all duplicate discovered books to be discarded. The Update Existing button was renamed to Update Match.

The plugin tweak overdrive_link_amazon_ident can be set to override the identifier used for the Set 'amazon' identifier for Kindle e-books configuration option. See the help section on Configuring Tweaks for more information.

Faster, but more strict, book matching algorithm.

Rename the embedded metadata plugin to "Overdrive Link*" to keep it separate from the main plugin.

Fix errors and missed books when searching Amazon, Axis 360, Hoopla, OverDrive (2016 website layout), and Scribd resulting from various website changes.

A major change to the OverDrive website design is being rolled out to lending libraries in 2016. With this redesign the identifiers associated with books will change, making links to book web pages partially incompatible with the old website design. Links previously created by searching will still function after a library migrates to the new design, but future searches will create different links, resulting in both old and new links existing for the same book. The Check current availability of selected books menu choice can be used to remove old-style links and replace them with the equivalent new-style.

Signing in to OverDrive sites with the new 2016 layout is not yet supported.

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by jhowell

The plugin tweak overdrive_link_amazon_ident can be set to override the identifier used for the Set 'amazon' identifier for Kindle e-books configuration option. See the help section on Configuring Tweaks for more information.

First, thanks for this.

Fix errors and missed books when searching Amazon, Axis 360, Hoopla, OverDrive (2016 website layout), and Scribd resulting from various website changes.

I have a problem with Axis360. The plugin seems to find the book fine, but won't change the odid identifier to add the link:

Starting job: Search for books by 1 author 
Overdrive Link 2.0.0, calibre 2.68.0 
Search language: English 
Search formats: Adobe EPUB eBook, Adobe PDF eBook, Kindle Book, Mobipocket eBook, Open EPUB eBook, Open PDF eBook 
================================================= 
Finding library books by Dean Koontz 
Accessing library AXISOCLS 
Search AXISOCLS for city by dean koontz 
Post http://ocls.axis360.baker-taylor.com/Search/GetLayoutViewIndex 
Data pageSize=10&layout=ListView&firstload=1 
Get http://ocls.axis360.baker-taylor.com/Search/GetContent?author=&dateAdded=&pubDate=&sourcePage=&take=10&skip=0&series=&term=dean+koontz+city&sort=-score&subject=&audience=&format=&availabilityFilter=ALL&genre=&formatType=&layout=ListView&pageSize=10&searchBy=keyword&page=1&includeRecommendable=False&firstload=1 
Response: page 1 of 1. 2 total results 
Found: The City by Dean R. Koontz [0014062012@ax, @ax/ocls, 9780345545947, 2014-07-02T00:00:00+00:00] 
Found: The Neighbor by Dean R. Koontz [0015011749@ax, @ax/ocls, 9780804180672, 2014-06-03T00:00:00+00:00] 
Found 2 books in 0.4 sec 
================================================= 
Opening cache database C:\Users\XXXXXXXX\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\Overdrive Link Cache.db 
Opened in 0.0 sec. Cache is 2,883,584 bytes and contains 4,063 items. 
Found 0014062012@ax/ in cache 
Found 0015011749@ax/ in cache 
Updated book info: The City by Dean R. Koontz [0014062012@ax, @ax/ocls, 9780345545947, Random House Digital, 2014-07-02T00:00:00+00:00] 
Updated book info: The Neighbor by Dean R. Koontz [0015011749@ax, @ax/ocls, 9780804180672, Random House Digital, 2014-06-03T00:00:00+00:00] 
================================================= 
Matching 1 calibre book with 2 library books 
For "The City by Dean Koontz" found match "The City by Dean R. Koontz [0014062012@ax, @ax/ocls, 9780345545947, Random House Digital, 2014-07-02T00:00:00+00:00]" 
Found 1 matching calibre books in 0.0 sec 
================================================= 
Updating current availability for books with newly found available links

Everything in that log looks exactly like what happens for other types of libraries, with the exception that there is no "new link" message.

EDIT: Found the problem...by setting the cache to zero, it worked. So, it looks like something got corrupt in the cache for the Axis360 entries. Is there a way to purge just those, because I really don't want to search without cache for every library.

LAST EDIT: OK, it looks like setting cache to 0 nuked it for all books, and now I just have to rebuild. Oh, well, at least it's fixed.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

So, it looks like something got corrupt in the cache for the Axis360 entries. Is there a way to purge just those, because I really don't want to search without cache for every library.

As you discovered there may be some cached book entries that have incorrect information as a result of previous plugin versions being unable to parse web pages correctly due to changes at some library websites.

If you believe that the plugin may be failing to find books that are available you can easily clear the cache. From the main Calibre screen select: Preferences -> Miscellaneous -> Open calibre configuration directory. Navigate to the plugins subdirectory and delete the file Overdrive Link Cache.db.

[cc_in_oh]

I belong to a lot of libraries and it can get to be a hassle keeping track of borrows and holds. I was thinking of configuring a custom column or two for status, e.g. "borrowed", "hold"... and the date the action occurred. I don't see an easy way to make it library-specific but I would normally place holds everywhere at once so not a major stumbling block. Any suggestions to streamline the process would be appreciated.

It would be nice if it could be supported to some extent if the borrows are done through the PI, e.g. prompting for result and autopoulating date. Or maybe additional availability search functionality to return checkout and hold info? Does this make any sense as a possible feature?

Thanks,
CC

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

I belong to a lot of libraries and it can get to be a hassle keeping track of borrows and holds. I was thinking of configuring a custom column or two for status, e.g. "borrowed", "hold"... and the date the action occurred. I don't see an easy way to make it library-specific but I would normally place holds everywhere at once so not a major stumbling block. Any suggestions to streamline the process would be appreciated.

I generally put the same book on hold at only one or two libraries, the ones with the shortest wait time. I use tags to keep track of what books I have on hold at which libraries. Things like "hold.ocls" or "hold.bpl". That makes it easy to search for books on hold across libraries and know which holds I want to release if I borrow the same book from a different library. (I don't care about the date when the hold started.)

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

It would be nice if it could be supported to some extent if the borrows are done through the PI, e.g. prompting for result and autopoulating date. Or maybe additional availability search functionality to return checkout and hold info? Does this make any sense as a possible feature?

I am considering adding hold/checkout status as part of the ol_wait_weeks information in a future release. Perhaps something like "05H@OCLS" for a 5 week wait, already on hold, at OCLS library. I am going to give it some more thought.

I do not plan any changes to the plugin to actually put books on or off hold automatically. I don't consider that to be part of the scope of this plugin.

[cc_in_oh]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I generally put the same book on hold at only one or two libraries, the ones with the shortest wait time. I use tags to keep track of what books I have on hold at which libraries. Things like "hold.ocls" or "hold.bpl". That makes it easy to search for books on hold across libraries and know which holds I want to release if I borrow the same book from a different library. (I don't care about the date when the hold started.)



I am considering adding hold/checkout status as part of the ol_wait_weeks information in a future release. Perhaps something like "05H@OCLS" for a 5 week wait, already on hold, at OCLS library. I am going to give it some more thought.

I do not plan any changes to the plugin to actually put books on or off hold automatically. I don't consider that to be part of the scope of this plugin.

Thanks! I should have thought of tags - that will be much easier to manage than a custom column. Date really isn't that important.

Retrieving the checkout and hold info would be great, especially if it had an option to be done globally regardless of the availability search selection. One problem I see would be cleaning up info for books no longer on hold or checked out - I can see that that would be much easier if limited to the search selection.

I wasn't suggesting that the PI should do the checkout or hold - initiating the browser dialog as it does now is more than sufficient. Anyway there's too much possible user interaction - choosing the format, download destination etc. Not to mention contending with page design changes...

Thanks for taking the time to respond in such detail and for your efforts in maintaining the PI - it's an incredibly useful tool for getting the most out of library memberships. I "plug" it every chance I get on the Amazon forums...

[JSWolf]

Right now, the main Overdrive site isn't working properly. So if that impacts your use of this plugin, you'll have to wait until Overdrive is fixed. Local libraries seem to be working.

[moredrowsy]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I am considering adding hold/checkout status as part of the ol_wait_weeks information in a future release. Perhaps something like "05H@OCLS" for a 5 week wait, already on hold, at OCLS library. I am going to give it some more thought.

Can you consider adding hold position and number of copies a certain library have? In my experience, I generally find libraries with more copies go through holds faster. Much appreciated if that would become a feature.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by moredrowsy

Can you consider adding hold position and number of copies a certain library have? In my experience, I generally find libraries with more copies go through holds faster. Much appreciated if that would become a feature.

The plugin already takes the number of copies into account when calculating the estimated wait time. In any case, the estimates are rough because the actual wait experienced depends heavily on whether other readers return books early or not.

ETA: An interesting sociological experiment. While each individual gets no personal benefit from returning books early, everyone benefits if that becomes standard practice. Follow the golden rule.