[Metadata Source Plugin] FictionDB

[Rellwood]

Is there a reason that the plugin won't match up books and get genres if I only use it without another plugin? I am trying to locate books that already have a fictiondb identifyer and often am coming back with no results. Any results I do get have no tags.

Log:

Spoiler:

<spoiler>
Running identify query with parameters:
{'title': 'The Flame and the Flower', 'authors': ['Kathleen E. Woodiwiss'], 'identifiers': {'isbn': '9780380005253', 'amazon': 'B000FC11UQ', 'asin': 'B000FC11UQ', 'ff': 'w/kathleen-woodiwiss/flame-and-flower', 'fictiondb': 'kathleen-e-woodiwiss~the-flame-and-the-flower~39911~b', 'goodreads': '896623', 'gr_isbn': '380005255', 'gr_isbn13': '9780380005253', 'mobi-asin': 'B000FC11UQ', 'odid': '34764@lacountylibrary.overdrive.com&34764@lapl.ov erdrive.com', 'odpid': 'B000FC11UQ@ak/store'}, 'timeout': 30}
Using plugins: FictionDB (1, 3, 0)
The log from individual plugins is below

****************************** FictionDB (1, 3, 0) ******************************
Found 1 results
Downloading from FictionDB took 1.0690321922302246


---
Title : The Flame and the Flower
Author(s) : Kathleen E. Woodiwiss
Publisher : Avon
Identifiers : fictiondb:kathleen-e-woodiwiss~the-flame-and-the-flower~39911
Comments : LOVERS FOR THE AGES!

In an age of great turmoil, the breathtaking romance of Heather Simmons and Captain Brandon Birmingham spans oceans and continents! Their stormy saga reaches the limits of human passion as we follow Heather's tumultuous journey from poverty...to her kidnapping at a squalid London dockside...to the splendor of Harthaven, the Carolina plantation where Brandon finally probes the depths of Heather's full womanhood!

THE FLOWER

Doomed to a life of unending toil, Heather Simmons fears for her innocence - until a shocking, desperate act forces her to flee...and to seek refuge in the arms of a virile and dangerous stranger.

THE FLAME

A lusty adventurer married to the sea, Captain Brandon Birmingham courts scorn and peril when he abducts the beautiful fugitive from the tumultuous London dockside. But no power on Earth can compel him to relinquish his exquisite prize. For he is determined to make the sapphire-eyed lovely his woman...and to carry her off to far, uncharted realms of sensuous, passionate love.
FictionDB book url: 'https://www.fictiondb.com/title/kathleen-e-woodiwiss~the-flame-and-the-flower~39911.htm'
parse_title: title_node= The Flame and the Flower
parse_authors: authors_node= Kathleen E. Woodiwiss
_append_tags - group=Genre tags_nodes="[]"
_append_tags - group=Genre tags: "[]"
_append_tags - group=CLASSIFICATION tags_nodes="[]"
_append_tags - group=CLASSIFICATION tags: "[]"
_append_tags - group=TIME PERIOD tags_nodes="[]"
_append_tags - group=TIME PERIOD tags: "[]"
parse_publisher - publisher_node: ['First Edition', 'Avon', 'Trade Paperback', '0380462761', '9780380462766', '\xa0', 'Avon', 'Mass Market Paperback', '0380005255', '9780380005253', '\xa0', 'Avon', 'Mass Market Paperback', '0380005255', '9780380005253', '\xa0', 'Avon', 'Mass Market Paperback', '0380005255', '9780380005253', '\xa0', 'Avon', 'Mass Market Paperback', '0380005255', '9780380005253', '\xa0', 'Futura Publications', 'Paperback', '0860071820', '9780860071822', '\xa0', 'Macdonald & J', 'Hardcover', '0354045792', '9780354045797', '\xa0', 'William Morrow', 'Hardcover', '0688125034', '9780688125035', '\xa0', 'Avon', 'Hardcover', '0380972514', '9780380972517', '\xa0', 'Harper', 'eBook', '0061743690', '9780061743696', '\xa0', 'HarperCollins', 'eBook (Kindle)', '\xa0', 'Romance Alive Audio', 'Audio Cassette', '1570960186', '9781570960185', '\xa0', 'Audio Literature', 'Audio Cassette', '0787121363', '9780787121365', '\xa0', 'HarperAudio', 'Audible', '\xa0', 'HarperCollins', 'Audio CD', '\xa0', 'HarperCollins', 'Audio CD', '\xa0', 'G.K. Hall & Company', 'Hardcover', '0816136718', '9780816136711', 'Large Print']

************************************************** ******************************
The identify phase took 1.23 seconds
The longest time (1.069032) was taken by: FictionDB
Merging results from different sources
We have 1 merged results, merging took: 0.00 seconds
</spoiler>

Looking online at the book there are all kinds of genres, settings, and classifications.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by Rellwood

Is there a reason that the plugin won't match up books and get genres if I only use it without another plugin? I am trying to locate books that already have a fictiondb identifyer and often am coming back with no results. Any results I do get have no tags.

The usual reason is that the website has been updated by the developers, changing the underlying structure for scraping which breaks the plugin. I would have to spend some time on it rewriting all the page parsing...

[Rellwood]

Thanks!

[kiwidude]

@Rellwood - I have a new build of this plugin which is updated with the website changes. It seems a few things got taken away that were there previously and replaced with Sub-Genres/Themes at some point so I have had to also update the configuration options to reflect this. The published date was also not being picked up.

I will give it a few days to give the translators a chance to catchup on the text changes and then will officially release.

[kiwidude]

Release Notes
https://github.com/kiwidude68/calibr...ctiondb-v1.4.0

[iamagloworm]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Release Notes
https://github.com/kiwidude68/calibr...ctiondb-v1.4.0

Thanks for working on the update. Very disappointing about the removal of age classification. FictionDB was the only source of that data that I know of. Is it no longer possible to collect this data?

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by iamagloworm

Thanks for working on the update. Very disappointing about the removal of age classification. FictionDB was the only source of that data that I know of. Is it no longer possible to collect this data?

The plugin can only scrape what is present - and it isn't on the website any more at least on all the books that I quickly sampled. My guess is either they changed their source for book data or they had someone manually figuring that out for all books they added and they decided that was madness/too much work and stopped it.

[iamagloworm]

Interesting. The age level still shows for me, for example the first book I checked: https://www.fictiondb.com/title/mort...sch~359964.htm

Second book I checked has it: https://www.fictiondb.com/title/the-...bit~206778.htm

Third book: https://www.fictiondb.com/title/harr...ing~134189.htm

They are books for children and teenagers.

I checked an adult book and indeed age level is absent: https://www.fictiondb.com/title/slow...ron~265287.htm

Perhaps they only provide the data for books geared toward young people?

Does that mean it could be included? I would really appreciate it!

[kiwidude]

Release Notes
https://github.com/kiwidude68/calibr...ctiondb-v1.4.1

Thanks to @2600box for the contribution.

[kiwidude]

Release Notes
https://github.com/kiwidude68/calibr...ctiondb-v1.4.2

[kiwidude]

Release Notes
https://github.com/kiwidude68/calibr...ictiondb-1.4.3

[jbozovich]

I have installed the current FictionDB metadata plugin (1.4.3) in calibre. FictionDB itself contains information for the books I am testing, but the plugin is returning no metadata. I understand that FictionDB changed its site in the past and that this caused the plugin to stop working. Since version 1.4.3 was released in February 2026, is the plugin expected to retrieve metadata from the current FictionDB site? If not, is another update planned?

I have 2000 books in FictionDB and early in 2026 I could use Calibe to return at least 90% of the meta on those books. Since thet redesigned their system a few months ago I can't obtain any of those books.

9780008707460 is a current example of such a book.

[kiwidude]

Release Notes:
https://github.com/kiwidude68/calibr...ictiondb-1.4.4

Thanks to jbozovich for reporting the issue, yes they have reworked their website.