Simple process to import books without use of metadata

[droodled]

Dear All,

I hope this is not to stupid a question. I'm new to calibre, and am having problems importing books in it. I have been looking in the forum, and on internet, but am not able to find anything on this.

In the past I used an android app moon+ reader, which worked well for me. I renamed all books I have, numbered their titles relative to release date, and put them in a folder with the authors name. So finding something was easy, and logical with regard to hierarchie.

I now have an epaper reader, which works a bit differently, so was looking into using calibre. Whatever I do though, it always imports and orders the books according to metadata in the files, of from the internet. It does not add from filename/folder. This is really annoying, since even books from the same series aquired over the years suddenly have completely different titles, etc.. I can change it using the edit metadata option, but then I have to go over more then 900 books 1 by 1.

-Is there a way to just simply import books by title, and ignoring every piece of metadata?

I can then use tags to combine them into collections easily accessible instead of having to edit metadata 1 by 1.

I've searched the forum, but am thinking that this might not be possible, and if I would want to use calibre, to have edit all my books metadata 1 by 1 :-(

But maybe there's a simpler way that I'm currently overlooking.

Thanks for any insight.

Best regards,

[pdurrant]

calibre/Preferences/Adding books

Uncheck "Read metadata from file contents rather than file name"

Work out what regular expression you'll need to extract book title, author name, series name and series number from your book file names, and enter that in the Regular Expression field.

If you're unfamiliar with regular expressions, give an example of your book files names, and someone will probably help with the magic incantation needed.

[droodled]

Hi pdurrant,

Thanks very much for this one. I'm gonna have a look into it, als the regular expressions you mention. I'd 1st like to try finding out myself before asking, as that's half the fun.

Best regards,

[kacir]

Originally Posted by droodled

I'm gonna have a look into it, als the regular expressions you mention.

There is a book for that ;-)
Called Mastering Regular Expressions from O'Reilly publisher.
Nowadays an AI - I have good experiences with ChatGPT and Aistudio from Google - can craft an AI for you and even explain how it works. Just give them info that Calibre uses Python dialect of the Regular Expression Language.

When I was importing lots of books that required RIs to process the filename I used a plugin that let me quickly select the RI suitable for that particular bunch of imports. That was long before the rise of our AI overlords, but I have been using Regular Expressions for quite a long time for various things.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=118776

[PeterT]

You also might like to look at the GetFileName plugin (only applicable to books added after installing it).

This will store the info about the original location of a file when it is added to calibre.

[droodled]

@kacir
-There is a book for that
Yeah, found it, but that one goes way over my head. I'm currently trying using the "adding books" option under preferences. Also tried using regex101.com, but some of the things I tried and worked, did not work properly in calibre, so stopped using that one.

@PeterT
-look at the GetFileName plugin
Thanks for the suggestion, will have a look to see if it helps.

For me the most important part is to get it in the hierarchial order I'm using now in a very simple manner like Author, Series, ID in series, and title. I don't need all the other metadata for now. I will probably start using the tag option to combine certain books, but thats for later.

I've been testing here, but already have some issue. Under "Adding Books, there's a "series_index". I was hoping to be able to use that for index in the series and thus determine its listing order. When using it though, adding e.g. "10" for it, it lists it as 10.0. Additionally, there's no column with that name under "Add you own columns" to activate as viewed column in the booklisting. Trying to add it as an own column, calibre tells me the word index in a custom column can't be used because its reserved for series.

So I thought of being a smart ass, and made another column "series_order" as integers, but that doesn't pick it up. The added column in the booklisting stays empty when adding a book.

Example bookname:
11 - Een Kuil Voor Een Ander - Baantjer, A.C. - Baantjer en de Waal.epub

(?P<series_index>.+) - (?P<title>.+) - (?P<author>.+) - (?P<series>.+)
Shows a number with floating point, this case 11.0

(?P<series_order>.+) - (?P<title>.+) - (?P<author>.+) - (?P<series>.+)
Does not pickup the number 11 to be used in the custom Series ID column

[droodled]

Dear All,

Is there someone that can help me with this one.

Been trying many things using regular expressions, but seem to not be able to grasp it to get it working.

All I want is using the book title, and extract from it 4 items.
-Series index
-Title
-Author
-Series

Tried below expressions, but can't get it to work. Only when I leave the index in the booktitle part will it of course use alphabetical order, but that's not what I'd prefer.

Example bookname:
11 - Een Kuil Voor Een Ander - Baantjer, A.C. - Baantjer en de Waal.epub

(?P<series_index>.+) - (?P<title>.+) - (?P<author>.+) - (?P<series>.+)
Shows a number with floating point, this case 11.0

(?P<series_order>.+) - (?P<title>.+) - (?P<author>.+) - (?P<series>.+)
Does not pickup the number 11 to be used in the custom Series ID column

Thanks for any hints or tips.

Best regards,

[theducks]

You can not have a naked series_index

You MUST have a Series to have the series-index

[droodled]

Thanks for reply.

I though I had that when I tried "(?P<series_index>.+) - (?P<title>.+) - (?P<author>.+) - (?P<series>.+)". It interpreted the series-index though as a floating point number. So for the exampl book "11 - Een Kuil Voor Een Ander - Baantjer, A.C. - Baantjer en de Waal.epub", it interpreted it as 11.0. Additionally, the series_index was not available as a column in the book listing.

-Am I interpreting calibres help information completely wrong here then?

I thought series, and series_index would be 2 columns.

-Can you give an example please using my information, or maybe I need to rename the ebook titles differently?

Best regards,

[kacir]

Originally Posted by droodled

@kacir
-There is a book for that
Yeah, found it, but that one goes way over my head.

That is why I was suggesting you consult an AI to help you to craft the RE.

Originally Posted by droodled

... there's a "series_index". I was hoping to be able to use that for index in the series and thus determine its listing order. When using it though, adding e.g. "10" for it, it lists it as 10.0.

Sometimes there is a prequel to series and you might want to number it 0.5, sometimes there is a short novelette between part 3 and 4 and you number it 3.5
It is a nice thing to have a series order a float not an integer.

Originally Posted by droodled

I thought series, and series_index would be 2 columns

Try it in Calibre. It will display it as "series [series index] in a default column called series. The individual series index field is for you when you write a template for filename for writing books to the disk, for example.

[droodled]

Thanks for all the help/suggestions from all. Got it working now, but also decided this is not the process I want to use to add ebooks. Am now going to look into using the commandline interface where, in combination with a macro, I think I can then can add the parameters instead of having to rename the ebooks themselves.

Don't laugh, but from the beginning I got it right. I didn't realise though, because the series index was in square brackets behind the series name itself in the same column. Thanks kacir. I didn't notice this, because the series name was larger then the columns width, and my mindset was when having 2 parameters series and series_index, that you also use/have 2 columns. At least that's what I always use when setting up databases using SQL/mySQL.

Also the suggestions from theducks makes sense now, because it did not at all when I 1st read it.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by droodled

... and my mindset was when having 2 parameters series and series_index, that you also use/have 2 columns. At least that's what I always use when setting up databases using SQL/mySQL.

For people that have a database mindset it doesn't make sense. But, the vast majority of Calibre users want to have an intuitive user interface and have no idea what to do with a database and this is one of features that makes it great.
Calibre has an UI that is intuitive for a casual user, and yet, is extremely powerful when you treat it as a database (that it is, under the cover) and use advanced features such as searches, Regular Expressions and other things that make it extremely rich and powerful.
By the way, try asking some AI to help you write a shell script for adding books. If you know how to describe what to do and write a good prompt, it might be able to write a script with hundreds of lines that works on the first try.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by kacir

By the way, try asking some AI to help you write a shell script for adding books. If you know how to describe what to do and write a good prompt, it might be able to write a script with hundreds of lines that works on the first try.

No, LLM/Generative AI is just broken search destroying the environment. It's designed to produce plausible, not correct, output and nearly half the time completely wrong, but without being an expert you don't know which half.

Use search and learn how to do stuff.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Quoth

No, LLM/Generative AI is just broken search destroying the environment. It's designed to produce plausible, not correct, output and nearly half the time completely wrong, but without being an expert you don't know which half.

Use search and learn how to do stuff.

Have you actually tried to us the AI for coding?
I have and I have been astonished how well it did work.
You have to write a good prompt. I wanted to process some *.json files from a smart watch and produce graphs for heart rate for each day. I wrote a prompt asking aistudio.google.com to write a code for me and it produced a 190 line python script that processed the files and produced output pdf files with graphic representation of the data formatted exactly to my description. And the script ran (in a sandbox with a copy of the data) on a first try. The script had nice comments explaining what it does and even covered edge cases that I did not ask for in my prompt.

Yes, I have seen an AI to hallucinate, and even had an argument with it, and it even refused to admit it was wrong even when I pointed to an error with a proof. And yes, I can create a prompt that will return a wrong answer, but I am actively using AI and it is very helpful in most cases. Just do not run the script or a command on a production system without a backup. And do not run things you do not understand how they are supposed to work. Also, take everything it produces with a healthy dose of skepticism. You should do that anyway, even if you get an answer from a person.

I have friends that are professional coders and their big-name software house employer pays for private instance of Claude AI for them to use it at work.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by kacir

By the way, try asking some AI to help you write a shell script for adding books. If you know how to describe what to do and write a good prompt, it might be able to write a script with hundreds of lines that works on the first try.

I would have to disagree with you. My background is in IT in an educational environment and the sheer number of students in coding classes who try to use AI to write their assignments and submit unusable code still boggles my mind. Heck, look at the number of people who have posted on MobileRead with their AI produced code asking if someone can help them to fix it.

AI can be helpful with writing code but I would not recommend anyone who does not have the experience and skills to debug the generated code to use AI as their primary code writing tool.