Search restrictions and search_getting_ids

[kiwidude]

I had to jump through quite a few hoops with the Find Duplicates plugin and facing some similar (but not identical) issues with Quality Check.

The issue is search restrictions and a clean way of passing a valid restriction to search_getting_ids().

Originally in QualityCheck I applied an actual search to the library view (like "formats:epub") before grabbing all the ids in the view. Thus I was able to avoid thinking about restrictions, as they were applied transparently in the background to the view, and whether the restriction was or was not in place was irrelevant to my plugin.

However this approach does not work if the user has highlighting turned on, as the set of ids I was getting back from the model of course cover all rows with just the epub ones highlighted.

So instead I changed to use "db.search_getting_ids()" which is a nicer approach anyway (since I don't have to change the view).

The second parameter is the search restriction to be applied. This is where things come unstuck, which is likely entirely due to my ignorance. I need to get a search restriction value to pass to the search_getting_ids() call every time I want to use it, in order to respect any search restriction that might be applied.

Where do I get a value from that represents a search restriction that search_getting_ids will understand? I cannot use gui.search.search_restriction as that only works for "current" type search restrictions, not for saved searches.

Hopefully there is a simple value somewhere I can use... ?

[chaley]

The search restriction must be a valid search as would go in the search box. It is up to you to generate such a thing.

If what you have is a search restriction name (a saved search name), then the restriction search is generated using something like

'search:"%s"'%(saved_search_name)

Or are you doing something else?

[kiwidude]

Perhaps I didn't explain very well. All I want to do is get a value to pass to search_getting_ids for it's second parameter of "restriction", which represents whatever the current restriction is that the user has applied in Calibre. As I said above I cannot use self.gui.search.search_restiction, because I will get a value of a saved search name in some cases, and actual text representing the restriction in others, depending on whether the user last applied a current search or a named restriction.

To get around this I can go down the FindDuplicates route of looking at the text in the combo, seeing if it starts with a * or not and then manipulating that into a value search_getting_ids can cope with. However that is something I would need to repeatedly do everywhere I call search_getting_ids(). I wondered if there was somewhere else that would give me the "underlying" value without requiring me to manipulate it.

[chaley]

You can get the current search restriction (the one in effect because the user did something) via db.data.search_restriction.

[kiwidude]

Perfect, thanks. Hoped it was around somewhere...