Adding new formats

[geekraver]

Hi all

For each of my epub books, I have generated a summary as a.txt plaintext file, in the same folder. I'd like these to show up as an additional format in the entry for each book. However, I don't see how to do this. Using Library Maintenance I can find them as "Extra book formats" but the only option seems to be to delete them, not add them. Is there are good solution to this?

Thanks
G

[Karellen]

If you press shift-a, you can navigate to, and select the txt file. It is a recognised format so you should be able to add it easily.

[BetterRed]

In future use the Add Books->Add an empty file to selected book records option to create the TXT file and then edit it.

Assuming the files are in the book folders and named summary.txt, you could open the book folder, drag-n-drop the summary.txt file onto the book details panel, and then delete the summary.txt file.

Added: tested in version 6.22.

BR

[geekraver]

Thanks for these suggestions. Unfortunately I am really looking for a bulk method; I have a large library and doing this one by one would be pretty tedious.

Sounds like I would need to make a PR against Calibre.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by geekraver

Hi all

For each of my epub books, I have generated a summary as a.txt plaintext file, in the same folder. I'd like these to show up as an additional format in the entry for each book. However, I don't see how to do this. Using Library Maintenance I can find them as "Extra book formats" but the only option seems to be to delete them, not add them. Is there are good solution to this?

Thanks
G

What you did, was add books 'Beneath the skirts' , so Calibre did not log them in(to the DB).

One possible way is to Use Copy to Library (delete after copy) to (a)NewLibrary

what is left is your problem books
The rest of my idea won't work, unless the file has the same (filename) naming as the real book , just with a .TXT extension

[ownedbycats]

First, move all the text files out of your library folder. I suggest use a bulk-renamer to rename them to the folder name and then move them somewhere else. (They aren't registered in the Calibre database so it shouldn't cause any issues, as long as you're careful to limit it to the txts.)

Get Action Chains plugin. Make a new chain. Single-field edit on formats, this template (swapping out D:\Whatever\ for your somewhere else):

D:\Whatever\{title} ({id}).txt

This should detect the files and add them to your books. Test it on one or two to make sure it works as expected first.

EDIT: You may be able to skip the 'copying them all out and bulk-editing' by repliating the library path with a template. I don't know how to do this.

I don't know what will happen if the file doesn't exist.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by geekraver

Sounds like I would need to make a PR against Calibre.

If you know how to code well enough to make a PR (github Pull Request) against calibre then you should be able to write a script that does the work. The script would walk the library looking for an a.txt file (or whatever it is named) in the book folder. When it finds one then it uses the calibre API method cache.add_format() method to add it as a book.

After verifying that the script worked, delete all the a.txt files.

This script might be a place to start.

import os
from calibre.library import db as DB

lib_path = sys.argv[1]
db = DB(path = lib_path)
cache = db.new_api
# Get the normalized library path
library_path = cache.backend.library_path

for book_id in cache.all_book_ids():
    # Construct the full path to the book folder
    path = os.path.join(library_path, cache.field_for('path', book_id).replace('/', os.sep))
    
    # Check if the file a.txt is in that folder
    txt_file = os.path.join(path, 'a.txt')
    if os.path.exists(txt_file):
        # It is. Add it as a format
        cache.add_format(book_id, 'txt', txt_file, run_hooks=False)
        print('added', txt_file)

You run it with calibre-debug -e script_file path_to_library

Of course, back up your library before running it!

[geekraver]

That's a good option. It may still be worth a PR though; it seems like missing functionality in the database repair options. If I have a format not in the DB, it seems reasonable to want to either add it to the database or delete it from the file system; right now only the latter is available.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by geekraver

That's a good option. It may still be worth a PR though; it seems like missing functionality in the database repair options. If I have a format not in the DB, it seems reasonable to want to either add it to the database or delete it from the file system; right now only the latter is available.

Working out whether some random file in the book folder is in fact an addable format is non-trivial. You must determine a) whether it is a valid format file type, b) determine if there isn't already such a format, c) determine that the book record actually exists, then d) whether the format will have the same name, which if true can cause data loss. Then you must e) add the format, and f) delete the "random file", both in a reliable (atomic) way. In the "check database" context you must do this on a folder-by-folder basis, controlling the fix options appropriately.

If you want to take this on then have at it, but bear in mind that in this case "you touched it last".

[geekraver]

Fair enough, you''ve scared me off. I'll stick to a script for my own purposes. :-)

[kjdavies]

Originally Posted by geekraver

Hi all

For each of my epub books, I have generated a summary as a.txt plaintext file, in the same folder. I'd like these to show up as an additional format in the entry for each book. However, I don't see how to do this. Using Library Maintenance I can find them as "Extra book formats" but the only option seems to be to delete them, not add them. Is there are good solution to this?

Thanks
G

Out of curiosity, have you considered adding a custom column and storing the text there? That means you could see it with the other metadata and I believe would allow indexing of the text, so you could search it.

If you do this, you could script "read the text file and assign metadata field" (via calibredb, or possibly within calibre itself -- I haven't worked with action chains, and I'm still pretty new to python)