[GUI Plugin] Overdrive Link

[LilyEvie]

A big thank you for fixing my favorite part of my favorite plugin


Also thank you PeterT for fixing my overlong post.

At least I got the Smiles right

[rracoon01]

I have a rather large wish list of ebooks (300+) and I find myself spending too much time just checking each title to see if it is available to borrow or how many holds are backed up for it. I checked out the Overdrive API website and see that the Library Availability API is just for that purpose. I thought about using this as a project to learn python but qualifying for a developer account did not seem likely, and besides the idea seems best suited for inclusion in the Overdrive Plugin.

The Availability API returns among other things, copies owned, copies available and number of holds for each lending model. Adding these up for all the lending models yields just the info I need. Immediate availability is one thing, but if not available, the number of copies owned and the number of holds yield a guestimate of the time frame that a copy would become available.

I realize that this information would be transient, so I guess the information would need to be date/time stamped. Presumably this would have to be stored in the ODID in the identifiers metadata and a user could readily pick that apart and create a custom column via a template. Again, because it is transient information, the plugin might have a new option like Refresh Availability Information” that would efficiently update just this information using all of the parameters in Customize Plugin dialog box.

I know this would save me a tremendous amount of time and I hope others will support the idea too. To say it would be simple would be naïve on my part but this idea surely should be implemented in the Overdrive Plugin rather than a stand alone plugin. Please give it some consideration.

This plugin is nothing short of magical!

[eschwartz]

I would think it should be more of a special menu option to efficiently find available copies for a particular book, on-demand. (I certainly don't want to burden OverDrive with thousands of requests at once, they might close their API in retaliation! ) It does sound like a pleasant option to have.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by rracoon01

I have a rather large wish list of ebooks (300+) and I find myself spending too much time just checking each title to see if it is available to borrow or how many holds are backed up for it.
...
I know this would save me a tremendous amount of time and I hope others will support the idea too. To say it would be simple would be naïve on my part but this idea surely should be implemented in the Overdrive Plugin rather than a stand alone plugin. Please give it some consideration.

Having the plugin determine and present on demand the current availability to borrow or estimated wait for already linked books has been on my to do list since you asked for that feature early last year. It has been a low priority for me because it is something that I don't personally need and will be fair amount of work to implement and maintain. However, I don't have any other features planned for the plugin at the moment so I will work on adding this. It will probably be a few weeks before I have anything to release.

[rracoon01]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I would think it should be more of a special menu option to efficiently find available copies for a particular book, on-demand. (I certainly don't want to burden OverDrive with thousands of requests at once, they might close their API in retaliation! ) It does sound like a pleasant option to have.

Certainly true but it should work, like all of the other requests, on just the current selection of books in the DB.

[rracoon01]

I thought I had put this idea forth earlier but could not find my post, so I did some research and started it again. Thanks for your attention to this. PM me if you wish any feedback.

[jhowell]

Version 1.32.0 - 12 May 2015

Add checking of the current availability of linked books to be borrowed and estimation of hold/wait time for books that are not immediately available. Results are provided via a custom column.

Handle change to Axis 360 website design. (Fixes Server response error (Cannot parse searchresultsummary: Titles that match).)

Improve book matching algorithm to take subtitles into account in more cases. This will reduce the number of instances where similarly named books are incorrectly linked.

Improve search for books at Oyster by doing additional searches using discovered author IDs.

Fix links for purchasable books at Oyster mistakenly shown as available to borrow.

Switch Scribd back to original search interface since that produces slightly better results.


Check Current Availability of Linked Books

The plugin has the optional ability to check previously linked books in order to determine whether they are currently available to be borrowed and if not provide an estimate of the expected hold/wait time in weeks.

In order to use this feature a custom column must be created by the user in the calibre library. Choose Preferences -> Add your own columns -> Add custom column. Enter a Lookup name of ol_wait_weeks and a Column heading with any desired label. The Column type must be Text, column shown in tag browser or Comma separated text, like tags, shown in tag browser. You will need to restart calibre for the new column to take effect.

Once the custom column has been created, a menu choice of Check current availability of selected books will become available. Choosing this will cause the plugin to check each of the borrowable links for the selected book(s) and use the results to populate the custom column. (These links must have been previously established by using the search capability of the plugin.) Only links that correspond to enabled libraries in the configuration will be checked.

The custom column will be populated with a series of comma separated entries, one for each link. Each entry is of the form ##@LIBNAME, where ## is the estimated wait time for the book in weeks and LIBNAME is the configured library name for that link. A wait time of "00" indicates available now, "99" weeks is the maximum that can be shown, and "XX" indicates that the availability could not be determined for that link. Links are sorted by wait duration, none to low to high, so that sorting the calibre library by this column by clicking on the column header will sort books in order of current availability.

The ability of the plugin to estimate availability and wait time varies based on the library provider. Providing credentials in the configuration to sign into a library will add further information for some providers as described below:

• 3M Cloud Library: Provides current availability or estimated wait. Only new (V2) 3M library sites are supported.
• Amazon Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner's Lending Library: Shows released books as always available and takes into account the release date of pre-release books.
• Axis360: Provides current availability or estimated wait based on the existing number of holds.
• EBSCOhost, Enki Library and OneClickdigital: Not yet supported.
• Freading: Shows released books as always available. Will take into account the release date of pre-release books only if sign-in credentials are provided.
• Hoopla, Project Gutenberg, Open Library (read and printdisabled collections), Oyster, and Scribd: Shows all books as always available.
• Open Library (lendinglibrary and inlibrary collections): Provides current availability or estimated wait based on the existing number of holds. Providing credentials to sign-in will also take into account the user's current position on the hold list for the book, if any.
• OverDrive: Provides current availability or estimated wait based on the existing number of holds. Also takes into account the date-of availability for pre-release books. Providing credentials to sign-in will also take into account OverDrive Advantage copies and the user's current position on the hold list for the book, if any.

[Terisa de morgan]

I think I'm going to authenticate myself against the libraries.

[eschwartz]

This is really nice!

[rracoon01]

Very Cool Indeed! Just exactly what I needed. Thanks for the very quick response.

A

[Terisa de morgan]

Now I've tested it, I can thank you much more. It works perfectly, and it's quite nece to use.

[LilyEvie]

The option to "Check Current Availability of Linked Books" is a very nice addition indeed.

[jhowell]

To those who said thanks: You're welcome. I hope that you find the the new availability checking feature to be useful.

Coming soon: Amazon has made a change to the formatting of web pages for Kindle books so I will work on another release to deal with that. Also, Hoopla has added e-book lending to their service so I will be supporting that in the plugin also.

[Montana Harper]

Thank you for the update to the plugin!

I have an odd issue that you might or might not be able to help me with. Periodically, when I'm using the plugin to open an Overdrive page to borrow a book, Calibre will stop working. This only happens in those circumstances; in other words, Calibre has never crashed on me at any other time.

I don't get a useful error message, just the default Windows "Calibre has stopped working" popup, and then Calibre closes.

I know that's not much to go on, so here's an example of how it happens:

1. Highlight a book in my library and, using the right-click context menu, access Overdrive Link > Borrow > Borrow book from [library abbreviation].

2. Default browser (Chrome) opens the library Overdrive page for that book.

3. Windows popup shows up ("Calibre has stopped working"), Calibre window is whited out, and then Calibre closes.

I have 11 lending libraries listed that it searches, and I have it check for all ebook formats except for Blio and all audiobook formats except for WMA, so I often have a long-ish list of places and formats a book is available in. It seems more likely to do it if I have enough possible library matches to require a "Borrow" menu with the libraries listed in a submenu. It doesn't seem to be random, i.e., if trying one library crashes Calibre, other library access from the same book will tend to crash it as well, though I don't see any correlation with specific libraries across multiple books, nor does it seem to be a sporadic internet connection issue, because if I switch immediately after restarting to another book, it's as likely as not to be fine.

If I can provide any other information or error logs, please let me know.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Montana Harper

I have an odd issue that you might or might not be able to help me with. Periodically, when I'm using the plugin to open an Overdrive page to borrow a book, Calibre will stop working. This only happens in those circumstances; in other words, Calibre has never crashed on me at any other time. ...

I haven't had this happen to me. I'll take a look at the software and see if I can find anything that could be causing this. Odd crashes from calibre are often associated with the Qt user interface library.

You indicate the crashes happen when you initiate the access of links by right clicking a book. Have you tried other ways of accessing the same links to see if the problem still occurs? Two other ways of accessing the links of a selected book are by clicking the Overdrive icon in the toolbar and by clicking a library name in the book details panel. It would be helpful for me to know whether these work properly for you or also result in crashes.