[GUI Plugin] Import List

[BetterRed]

Moderator Notice

@kcar181 - Please read Guideline #3

I deleted your necro post in the Development forum

BR

[kcar181]

Sorry I posted in the wrong thread. Thanks for your patience

[Floating Quietly]

A huge thank you to CapInk for updating the plugin.

There is an issue I was hoping someone could help me with.

I want to import from a CSV where I have a column that tracks the date that I added the particular book. I wanted to save that date to the "Date" built-in column in Calibre. But when I select "Fields.." in Step 1 I don't see a choice for Date or anything that looks like it. Any hints on how to deal with this?

Thanks!

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by kcar181

Hi guys Im trying to figure out a custom webpage

http://www.worldswithoutend.com

I figured some of it out but ive never used xpath before. Titles are fine but all the authors are adding combined. "Bob & Sue & Lee" instead of:
Bob
Sue
Lee



//*[@id="reportlist"]
.//p[@class="title"]/a/text()
.//p[@class="author"]/a/text()

This is what im using for page:
https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_banned_sff.asp

The problem is the XPath for the row. What you have identifies the full list. What you need is to identify each book in the list. If you look at the source for the list, each book looks like:

<div class="awardslisting">
  <div class="gallery">
    
	<a href="novel.asp?id=698" class="trophy trophy2" onMouseOver="return overlib('Total Award Nominations: 2', WIDTH, '200', RIGHT)" onMouseOut="nd();"></a>
	
	<a href="novel.asp?id=698" class="trophyx trophyx1" onMouseOver="return overlib('Total Book List Inclusions: 1', WIDTH, '200', RIGHT)" onMouseOut="nd();"></a>
	
    <a href="novel.asp?ID=698"><img src="covers_md/pp_theamber.jpg" border="0" alt="The Amber Spyglass" /><!-- If winner then <span class="gold"></span> else if nom then <span class="silver"></span> end if --></a>
    
  </div>
  <p class="title"><a href="novel.asp?ID=698">THE AMBER SPYGLASS</a></p>
  <p class="author"><a href="author.asp?ID=694">Philip Pullman</a></p>
</div>

Each book is within the div with class "awardslisting". So, the following should work:

//div[@class="awardslisting"]

Your XPaths for the title and author are correct.

[capink]

Originally Posted by Floating Quietly

A huge thank you to CapInk for updating the plugin.

There is an issue I was hoping someone could help me with.

I want to import from a CSV where I have a column that tracks the date that I added the particular book. I wanted to save that date to the "Date" built-in column in Calibre. But when I select "Fields.." in Step 1 I don't see a choice for Date or anything that looks like it. Any hints on how to deal with this?

Thanks!

I don't know why this was not included in the plugin from the start. Maybe there is a good reason! If anyone know of a good reason not to include it please explain.

[Bookstooge]

when I added my Librarything catalog csv file to calibre a couple of years ago using this plugin, I was able to include the date I read the book. So dates are possible. Sorry I can't be more specific.

[capink]

Dates are possible. You can add custom column dates in addition to the standard pubdate. What is not included is the standard date (timestamps) column.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by capink

I don't know why this was not included in the plugin from the start. Maybe there is a good reason! If anyone know of a good reason not to include it please explain.

The "Date" column is usually maintained by calibre. It is set to the current timestamp when a book is added to the library. While it is editable, my guess is that kiwidude didn't think it was a column that should be updated.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The "Date" column is usually maintained by calibre. It is set to the current timestamp when a book is added to the library. While it is editable, my guess is that kiwidude didn't think it was a column that should be updated.

↑ ↑ ↑ ✔

{Date} has a purpose as David noted, and I belong to the school of 'leave the purpose intact'.
I know many others reuse columns for their own tasks, but we have the option to add our own and not mess with the data.

"When did I add this to Calibre? Oh! #$%, I reused the {Date} for last xyz"

Numbers, Dates, Logical (T/F) add a small bit of DB size, (unlike some of the others.) and take almost no performance hit (unlike calculated from other fields). So that should not be a major issue deterring making your own Date
and it avoids 2 different PI re-purposing (then later come here asking WHAT is messing with my last_read date.

[capink]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The "Date" column is usually maintained by calibre. It is set to the current timestamp when a book is added to the library. While it is editable, my guess is that kiwidude didn't think it was a column that should be updated.

Originally Posted by theducks

↑ ↑ ↑ ✔

{Date} has a purpose as David noted, and I belong to the school of 'leave the purpose intact'.
I know many others reuse columns for their own tasks, but we have the option to add our own and not mess with the data.

"When did I add this to Calibre? Oh! #$%, I reused the {Date} for last xyz"

Numbers, Dates, Logical (T/F) add a small bit of DB size, (unlike some of the others.) and take almost no performance hit (unlike calculated from other fields). So that should not be a major issue deterring making your own Date
and it avoids 2 different PI re-purposing (then later come here asking WHAT is messing with my last_read date.

Thanks for the feedback. It should be kept as it is and users should use custom date columns instead.

[Floating Quietly]

Originally Posted by theducks

↑ ↑ ↑ ✔

{Date} has a purpose as David noted, and I belong to the school of 'leave the purpose intact'.
I know many others reuse columns for their own tasks, but we have the option to add our own and not mess with the data.

"When did I add this to Calibre? Oh! #$%, I reused the {Date} for last xyz"

Numbers, Dates, Logical (T/F) add a small bit of DB size, (unlike some of the others.) and take almost no performance hit (unlike calculated from other fields). So that should not be a major issue deterring making your own Date
and it avoids 2 different PI re-purposing (then later come here asking WHAT is messing with my last_read date.

It's a fair point. But I'm curious how you think about my situation.

I used a different program that had a date field with the identical semantics of Calibre. The date field represented when the record was created in that program.

I exported that program's information to a CSV and now want to import it to Calibre.

I'd like to exactly re-hydrate the information from the other program in Calibre so that I can order by the Date column and know it represents when I added the content (which is not the same as when I read the content, in many cases that was months before the add date).

How would you suggest I create that experience in Calibre? And ideally how can I create it without having to constantly type dates in an extra field for every new book I add forever. That is just going to be really annoying. Especially when I forget to do it and a book gets "lost". So now I have to go write some kind of logic to detect missing dates and fix them.

Thoughts?

[capink]

Sorry if I am missing something, but why not just create a custom date column, import the data into it, and use the custom date column to sort your columns?

Edit: And by the way, timestamp column is absent from bulk metadata tool, which reinforces the idea it should not be used.

You can bulk read the data from the timestamp using templates in case you want to migrate the data to another column.

[Floating Quietly]

Originally Posted by capink

Sorry if I am missing something, but why not just create a custom date column, import the data into it, and use the custom date column to sort your columns?

Edit: And by the way, timestamp column is absent from bulk metadata tool, which reinforces the idea it should not be used.

You can bulk read the data from the timestamp using templates in case you want to migrate the data to another column.

If I create my own field then every time I add a book from now until the end of time I have to remember to manually enter that date. That is really annoying. If I could just set the current date column during this one time import then the whole problem disappears and moving forward I don't have to do anything special or different since the existing date column has exactly the semantics I want.

[capink]

Create a composite column with the following template:

{#custom_date:'ifempty($, field('timestamp'))'}

replace #custom_date with the name of your custom column. And choose sort column by date. This column will show the value of the #custom_date and if not found will substitute it with timestamp.

[kcar181]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The problem is the XPath for the row. What you have identifies the full list. What you need is to identify each book in the list.

//div[@class="awardslisting"]

Your XPaths for the title and author are correct.

Thanks my friend it works perfectly now. Thanks for taking the time to look at it. I'll add that to my budding xpath knowledge. Would there be an easy fix for changing "TITLES" of the books to "Titles" (lower case)?