[GUI Plugin] FanFicFare

[SilentShadow123]

Originally Posted by kim67255

I'm trying to get the browser cache feature to work. I can't even find my cache file. I cleared the browser cache. That didn't do anything.

I'm so lost. I've read the directions to do this but it's all above my head. In step 1, it says to find my cache directory but I can't even find that. I have an LG laptop. The directions where for a Mac.

I know enough about Calibre to load my stories/books, add columns ect. I've changed things in the personal ini. But now I'm getting this message when I try to update a story. The message is
Directory does not contain a known browser cache type: 'C:\WINDOWS\system32'

I took out what I put in and I'm still getting the same error.

I know I sound like a moron, but I need help. Several of you have helped in the past and have been very patient with me. Any help would help. Thanks in advance.

As someone who is not tech-savvy, I understand how difficult this is. I got it to work eventually through a series of steps I followed. I can try to help you out the best I can, but please keep in mind that this is likely out of my jurisdiction and this is the way I got it to work.

1. Find your browser cache location. For mine, I have a Mac and my browser is Chrome. From the list given to us on https://github.com/JimmXinu/FanFicFa...erCacheFeature, I located it to be:
#browser_cache_path:/Users/your.user/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome/Default/Cache

For your LG Laptop which likely runs Windows, if you use the browser Chrome, then your location would be either of these two:

browser_cache_path:C:\Users\YourUser\AppData\Local \Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache
browser_cache_path:C:\Users\YourUser\AppData\Local \Google\Chrome\User Data\Profile 1\Cache

For Firefox: browser_cache_path:C:\Users\YourUser\AppData\Local \Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ZjwI7Fo4.default\cache2

Just make sure to choose the appropriate option for your location, and replace "YourUser" with your windows username.

2. After you've found the right location enter it below [defaults] in personal.ini.

The top part of my code looks like this:
[defaults]
browser_cache_path:/Users/YourUser/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome/Default/Cache
## [defaults] section applies to all formats and sites but may be
## overridden at several levels. Example:

3. Last step is to copy in these lines of code near the end of the personal.ini code under [overrides]:

[www.fanfiction.net]
##the following line tells FFF to use the browser cache when set to true
use_browser_cache:true
##the following line limits FFF to use cache entries no older than the ##number of hours shown
##(in this case, cached items no 4 hours or less old).
browser_cache_age_limit:4.0
use_browser_cache_only:true

(You don't have to add in the comments if you don't want to. They're just a personal preference of mine.)

[kim67255]

Originally Posted by SilentShadow123

As someone who is not tech-savvy, I understand how difficult this is. I got it to work eventually through a series of steps I followed. I can try to help you out the best I can, but please keep in mind that this is likely out of my jurisdiction and this is the way I got it to work.

1. Find your browser cache location. For mine, I have a Mac and my browser is Chrome. From the list given to us on https://github.com/JimmXinu/FanFicFa...erCacheFeature, I located it to be:
#browser_cache_path:/Users/your.user/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome/Default/Cache

For your LG Laptop which likely runs Windows, if you use the browser Chrome, then your location would be either of these two:

browser_cache_path:C:\Users\YourUser\AppData\Local \Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache
browser_cache_path:C:\Users\YourUser\AppData\Local \Google\Chrome\User Data\Profile 1\Cache

For Firefox: browser_cache_path:C:\Users\YourUser\AppData\Local \Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ZjwI7Fo4.default\cache2

Just make sure to choose the appropriate option for your location, and replace "YourUser" with your windows username.

2. After you've found the right location enter it below [defaults] in personal.ini.

The top part of my code looks like this:
[defaults]
browser_cache_path:/Users/YourUser/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome/Default/Cache
## [defaults] section applies to all formats and sites but may be
## overridden at several levels. Example:

3. Last step is to copy in these lines of code near the end of the personal.ini code under [overrides]:

[www.fanfiction.net]
##the following line tells FFF to use the browser cache when set to true
use_browser_cache:true
##the following line limits FFF to use cache entries no older than the ##number of hours shown
##(in this case, cached items no 4 hours or less old).
browser_cache_age_limit:4.0
use_browser_cache_only:true

(You don't have to add in the comments if you don't want to. They're just a personal preference of mine.)

This worked and now Calibre sees my cache directory. Now I'm back to the orig error that everyone else is getting.

cloudscraper reports: "Detected a Cloudflare version 2 Captcha challenge, This feature is not available...."


How do I work around that? I thought that was what the Browser Cache Feature was supposed to do.

[SilentShadow123]

Originally Posted by kim67255

This worked and now Calibre sees my cache directory. Now I'm back to the orig error that everyone else is getting.

cloudscraper reports: "Detected a Cloudflare version 2 Captcha challenge, This feature is not available...."


How do I work around that? I thought that was what the Browser Cache Feature was supposed to do.

Yes, that's odd. Once I was done with all these steps, I wasn't seeing the Cloudflare error anymore. Are you sure you've followed the steps exactly and you've added all the necessary lines of code and uncommented them?

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by kim67255

I'm trying to get the browser cache feature to work. I can't even find my cache file. I cleared the browser cache. That didn't do anything.

I'm so lost. I've read the directions to do this but it's all above my head. In step 1, it says to find my cache directory but I can't even find that. I have an LG laptop. The directions where for a Mac.

I know enough about Calibre to load my stories/books, add columns ect. I've changed things in the personal ini. But now I'm getting this message when I try to update a story. The message is
Directory does not contain a known browser cache type: 'C:\WINDOWS\system32'

I took out what I put in and I'm still getting the same error.

I know I sound like a moron, but I need help. Several of you have helped in the past and have been very patient with me. Any help would help. Thanks in advance.

System32 is definitely not your cache folder. The location depends on which browser you are using.

[kim67255]

I was able to update 2 stories last night. This morning I tried and it won't work. I've tried your step 3. the same thing. I take it out same thing I have it in now and get this message: cloudscraper reports: "Detected a Cloudflare version 2 Captcha challenge, This feature is not available...."


Is all of this a workaround until ffn gets their act together/finish whatever it is they are doing? Or is this the way we need to start updating all ffn stories.?

At least now my Calibre is seeing the cache so that is better than last night.

[milford833]

Don't know if this idea has been mentioned in the past or not. I have found when I get a cloudflare capcha challenge and I go back a page or reload the page or something along the line of reloading the page, it clears the captcha and it goes on to the page. I do not know if this is possible to do or not in the fan fiction app, or if has been mentioned or tried before. Just thought I would let you know something I have done to avoid the cloudflare capcha. (I mainly try to avoid it because I am on a VPN and Capcha, for some reason, does not work in the states when using it, but it does work if I move the VPN connection to another country).

[HowWouldIKnow]

Is there a site where people share their inis?
I would assume most want the same thing...

I still get:
Erotica Tags, Summary, Erotica Tags, Rating with blanking the titlepage:

[www.literotica.com]
extra_titlepage_entries:
use_basic_cache:true
include_tocpage:false
##extratags_label:literotica

##extra_valid_entries:eroticatags,averrating
##eroticatags_label:Erotica Tags
averrating_label:Average Rating
##extra_titlepage_entries:eroticatags,averrating
add_to_include_subject_tags:,eroticatags
titlepage_entries: seriesHTML,category,genre,language,characters,ship s,status,datePublished,dateUpdated,dateCreated,rat ing,warnings,numChapters,numWords,publisher,erotic atags,description


use_meta_keywords: true
chapter_categories_use_all: true
clean_chapter_titles: true
description_in_chapter: true

extratags_label:literotica
extratags:literotica

custom_columns_settings:
averrating=>#usrrating

And I just realized that the settings are not overriden.
When I have tocpage:false in epub and tocpage:true in literotica, it will not write an toc, but when I have tocpage:true in epub and tocpage:false in literotica it will write one.

Is that a bug or is there a Setting that does this?

[ownedbycats]

I am not responding to any post in specific, but when Cloudflare was first implemented there was a pretty long discussion about what options were available and Jim decided that using the cache would be best. I believe he specifically said that he did not care to get into an arms race with Cloudflare.

[bigwoof]

Thanks Jim for the cache feature. It works really well!!

Finally got round to using it this past weekend as the aggressive cloudflare setting FFF is using seems to be here to stay...

some "tips" that might help others

1. if using email notifications from FFF to announce new chapters / books of subscribed stories/authors/communities, it's useful to label all messages from bot@fanfiction.net with a special tag (in gmail, you just setup a rule). that way you can easily find all the messages that need special handling (over others from say AO3 that don't)

2. Hotkeys are your friends in chrome. what I do is go to my special label (my label is
called process) and then click the last new email, control click on all the links to load the new chapter in a new background tab and then use the previous message button and quickly finish loading up all the new emails.

After all new emails are done, click on the label again, select all emails, right click and mark them as unread and right click again and remove the label. now you can just use the "get story urls from email" feature in FanficFare to process all the updated and new stories at one go. but before starting the FanFicFare process, you should do the following bit below first

After clearing the labels in the gmail tab, I then switch to the first opened tab (with an updated FFF story pointing to the latest chapter as the email notification link sends you there by default) with "Control-Tab" (hotkey to switch to next tab to the right in Chrome) and then put the mouse where the chapter selector is, click on it and select first page (need to reload the first and last page in the cache). then control-tab, click (no need to move the mouse as the chapter selector is in the same place for all stories), and repeat for all tabs.

takes 5 mins to clear about 20-30 new stories. if a story has more than one new chapter, additional clicking is needed.

exception is emails from FFF communities pointing out new stories added to the community. for those emails, the link to the story is not the top link (that links to the community link). you need to scroll down and click the 2nd link.

3. The WebToEpub Chrome plugin is super useful if you want to load up a whole story (new story or something that just broke due to reasons). click on pack epub to load all pages. if it hangs, you need to reload any FFF page and wait for the captcha to pass. WebToEpub will eventually resume but the page it was stuck on might have an error and need to be reloaded.

4. remember to click on the photo on the first page of a new story if you want the image in the epub (and set the appropriate use image setting in personal.ini).

5. A somewhat common FFF error occurs when a story has a new chapter (say 40) and you can open chapter 40 in the browser but when you select chapter 1, chapter 1 loads and shows only 39 chapters. i.e. the first chapter is not updated. You need to wait until the first chapter is updated (reload chapter 1 some time later) before the story can be updated properly.

Hope this helps... also, don't be like me and spend 15 mins wondering why the cache was not working only to realise the cache was not being saved due to disk space issues.. oops!

[SilentShadow123]

Hey, I was wondering if there's a way to have the covers on fanfiction.net get automatically added as the covers of those same books after I've downloaded them into calibre? Right now, all the books I download from fanfiction.net have blue/default blank covers.

[bigwoof]

Originally Posted by SilentShadow123

Hey, I was wondering if there's a way to have the covers on fanfiction.net get automatically added as the covers of those same books after I've downloaded them into calibre? Right now, all the books I download from fanfiction.net have blue/default blank covers.

using the browser cache update method, you have to click on the picture on chapter 1 of each story you want a cover for and set the appropriate option in the [fanfiction.net] section of personal.ini basically the specific option below needs to be set to false (assuming you have set all the other "update cover" options in fanficfare to true)

## If you want covers to work correctly with use_browser_cache, you'll
## need to click the cover image at least once for each story. Or
## turn cover off.
never_make_cover:false

if you have already downloaded the whole story, you can delete the last chapter (press T in calibre to bring up the book editor then delete the last chapter and save) and then update to get the deleted chapter and the book image. It might be possible to just update the cover from the cache without updating a chapter. not sure if the update metadata options will work.

[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by HowWouldIKnow

...
I still get:
Erotica Tags, Summary, Erotica Tags, Rating with blanking the titlepage:

...

And I just realized that the settings are not overriden.
When I have tocpage:false in epub and tocpage:true in literotica, it will not write an toc, but when I have tocpage:true in epub and tocpage:false in literotica it will write one.

Is that a bug or is there a Setting that does this?

Re: titlepage, I cannot duplicate your problem. Maybe you have more than copy of the site section?

For reasons that made sense at the time, [epub] takes priority over [site.com]. See https://github.com/JimmXinu/FanFicFa...ion-precedence

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I am not responding to any post in specific, but when Cloudflare was first implemented there was a pretty long discussion about what options were available and Jim decided that using the cache would be best. I believe he specifically said that he did not care to get into an arms race with Cloudflare.

I have lost basically all interest in fighting with ffnet about this. Browser cache works well enough for me for the few active authors I still read on ffnet.

Unless someone comes up with a radical new idea, I'm not thinking about it anymore right now.

Many thanks to the members here are willing and able to help each other.

[SilentShadow123]

Originally Posted by bigwoof

using the browser cache update method, you have to click on the picture on chapter 1 of each story you want a cover for and set the appropriate option in the [fanfiction.net] section of personal.ini basically the specific option below needs to be set to false (assuming you have set all the other "update cover" options in fanficfare to true)

## If you want covers to work correctly with use_browser_cache, you'll
## need to click the cover image at least once for each story. Or
## turn cover off.
never_make_cover:false

if you have already downloaded the whole story, you can delete the last chapter (press T in calibre to bring up the book editor then delete the last chapter and save) and then update to get the deleted chapter and the book image. It might be possible to just update the cover from the cache without updating a chapter. not sure if the update metadata options will work.

This worked. Thank you so much!

[Philosophize]

Originally Posted by SilentShadow123

As someone who is not tech-savvy, I understand how difficult this is. I got it to work eventually through a series of steps I followed.

I'm pretty sure I've followed those steps, and I've reviewed them multiple times, but all I get is this error:

Browser Cache Failed to Load with error 'Supposed cache entry file did not end with EOF header with correct magic number: '/Users/XXX/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome/Default/Cache/faec7cb1ba53525a_0''

I get this even after clearing the cache and clicking through every chapter on a story. Curiously, I get the exact same error when trying a story that hasn't been cached.

[bigwoof]

Originally Posted by Philosophize

I'm pretty sure I've followed those steps, and I've reviewed them multiple times, but all I get is this error:

Browser Cache Failed to Load with error 'Supposed cache entry file did not end with EOF header with correct magic number: '/Users/XXX/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome/Default/Cache/faec7cb1ba53525a_0''

I get this even after clearing the cache and clicking through every chapter on a story. Curiously, I get the exact same error when trying a story that hasn't been cached.

2 quick things:

1. if you get the same behaviour before and after clearing the cache, your directory might not be the actual cache directory then.

it appears you are on a mac (so I can't give a definitive answer as I don't have one)

but can you try this directory instead?

/Users/XXX/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome/Default/Cache/ instead? replace XXX with your user.

also please view the directory above (and your original) in a file browser. the actual cache directory will have files inside called index, data_0, data_1, ..., and lots of other small files.

2. If the directory is correct, make sure chrome can write to it and that you have enough disk space.

to check it's the right directory and it's working, launch chrome, access new websites and make sure files are appearing in that directory. if nothing is appearing, it's either wrong or you don't have permission / sufficient disk space.

hope this helps!