Searching questions?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Starson17

2) I may decide I need an #award2 and an #award3 column for overlaps. It would complexify searching, however.

A thought: I don't think it would be hard (more than an hour of work) to add searching of the form #foo*:query, where #foo* means any custom field beginning with foo. This would dramatically simplify your #award[1-5] search problem. Of course, the query would need to be valid for all the matched fields, but all that would happen if it isn't is the query would fail.

The gotcha might be using them (award1, award2, etc) in save templates. Not sure if this is an issue.

Of course, the right solution would be 'series is_multiple=True', but that isn't going to happen.

As an aside, your custom columns are incredibly useful, even where I also have the data in tags.

Thanks.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by chaley

I don't think it would be hard... to add searching of the form #foo*:query, where #foo* means any custom field beginning with foo.

I've only been adding awards for about a week. I'm leaning toward the #award[1-5] system, but it probably makes sense for me to try it out before considering ways to make searching easier. I'm comfortable with complex searches #award1:=Hugo or #award2:=Hugo or #award3:=Hugo, etc.

As long as I have your interest - I vaguely recall some discussion by you of considering support for multivalued tags as in "Hugo=1995, Nebula=1996,Science Fiction" etc. and you could search for the values of the tags.

Did the custom columns replace that idea?

One thought I had when setting this up was that I'd merely use tags as above - "Hugo=1995, Nebula=1996" - either in a tag-like custom #award column or in the main tags field. Even though such tags are not multivalued, I could still find all Hugo awards with the search tag:Hugo and see the year in the tag.

I decided I liked my current series-like custom column system better as it let me sort by year and (with your new improvements) find all within a year range or after a specified year.

[speakingtohe]

Slightly off topic but related I thnk.

I am interested in a copywright field or first published field.
Many prolific authord publish almost annually or oftener so it would be nice to do it auto increment like a series (I know it wouldn't be on bulk edit form)

I would probably put in author name as series and use fantastic fiction as source for dates.

I cannot try it right now as I am having a few probems with my library and don't want to add anything so any thoughts/advice apreciated.

Helen

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Starson17

As long as I have your interest - I vaguely recall some discussion by you of considering support for multivalued tags as in "Hugo=1995, Nebula=1996,Science Fiction" etc. and you could search for the values of the tags.

Did the custom columns replace that idea?

Yes. Multi-valued tags became text/is_multiple=False fields. Books with tag:X and tag:Y became text/is_multiple=True.

I decided I liked my current series-like custom column system better as it let me sort by year and (with your new improvements) find all within a year range or after a specified year.

I like this idea as well. I look forward to hearing your thoughts in a while, after you have used it.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Starson17

I still have some tests I'd like to do to verify that it works via the content server, but they'll have to wait until I update the source for the machine that acts as my content server.

As expected, it works great on the content server, too.

[Starson17]

Charles (or others),

I've looked for a place to put this question, but finally decided to put it here. I'm trying to make some of the information I have in custom columns available to my family.

Currently, I'm advising them to do searches, which all work through the content server, but this is less than perfect. Although the searches work great, they can't actually see the information in the custom columns. For example, they can search for all award winners, but can't see which award they have won.

I know you use Calibre2opds and an Apache server setup. Does Calibre2opds provide support for custom columns in a way that would allow them to be visible from a remote location?

I currently modify the index.html header for the content server to send notes to the family about new custom columns and possible searches to use them, but that's not completely satisfactory. I'm thinking about modifying the source to display my personal custom column fields in the content server, but I'm wondering if you have any suggestions for other approaches to this issue?

[kovidgoyal]

browse to /opds in firefox you will get the opds feeds that include custom coulmn based categories.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

browse to /opds in firefox you will get the opds feeds that include custom coulmn based categories.

Wow! I knew /opds was available, but didn't realize what I would see. It's cool!

Every search is there, and each custom column. Inside my custom #award column is each award name, so I can click on "Hugo Nominated" and see every book that was nominated. That gets me very close to what I want. However, when I get to the last click, I see a list of all the books, with their comments and tags, but I still don't see my #award_index, i.e., the year of the award associated with my #award (series-like) custom column.

I could send that info into tags or into comments, both of which do appear there, but as long as I'm picking brains, is there any way to get that info to the person browsing?

[Starson17]

Related question:

Is there any way to download the format/book from the /opds access to the library? I know I can go back to the main entry, search for the name, and get it there, but is there a more direct way?

Also - I've seen that EPUBReader for Firefox supports opds library access. Will that work to get books? Has anyone tried it? (on my todo list for tonight!)

[kovidgoyal]

I believe ibis reader will work with the opds feed. EPUB Reader should work as well.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Starson17

I know you use Calibre2opds and an Apache server setup. Does Calibre2opds provide support for custom columns in a way that would allow them to be visible from a remote location?

No, it doesn't. I intend to ping dpierron about this once we have a solid custom metadata interface, which we are working on now.

I'm thinking about modifying the source to display my personal custom column fields in the content server, but I'm wondering if you have any suggestions for other approaches to this issue?

Kovid's suggestion is a good one. One downside for me is that sometimes Firefox does not display all the output (I see around 30 books and no 'next page' link), and IE 8 doesn't display clickable links.

I think that adding a listbox containing all the saved searches to the main server would be a good idea and not overly hard to do, but that doesn't solve your problem.

Better would be to add an interface to the content server preferences permitting the user to 'check' the columns that should appear in the content server. I haven't messed in the content server code, so I can't say how hard this would be to do. My guess is that it isn't easy, because you would need to change the javascript book fetch to make it dynamic.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Starson17

Every search is there, and each custom column. Inside my custom #award column is each award name, so I can click on "Hugo Nominated" and see every book that was nominated. That gets me very close to what I want.

Question: If you ask for a display of more than 30 books, do you see them all?

However, when I get to the last click, I see a list of all the books, with their comments and tags, but I still don't see my #award_index, i.e., the year of the award associated with my #award (series-like) custom column.

I could send that info into tags or into comments, both of which do appear there, but as long as I'm picking brains, is there any way to get that info to the person browsing?

I am submitting code to Kovid that prints values for all the non-None custom fields, include #foo_index.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by chaley

Question: If you ask for a display of more than 30 books, do you see them all?

No.

I am submitting code to Kovid that prints values for all the non-None custom fields, include #foo_index.

Excellent!

[chaley]

@starson17: Kovid has already merged the new code, so you can test it.

Also, the 30 limit can be removed/changed with the option --max-opds-items. Set it to the largest number of items you are willing to see. My guess is that number is not larger than a few hundred.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by chaley

@starson17: Kovid has already merged the new code, so you can test it.

Will do, as soon as I get access to my Calibre content server tonight.

Also, the 30 limit can be removed/changed with the option --max-opds-items. Set it to the largest number of items you are willing to see. My guess is that number is not larger than a few hundred.

Where is that option set? It looks like a command line option. I normally just let the content server start via the GUI. I can change to command line startup, but can I set that option for GUI startup?