Finding books by metadata

[mst]

I put my books in folders manually on my Kobo Clara HD without having Calibre do the synching. I see how I can find books by filename or Calibre metadata, but how could I find them with the metadata already stored in the files? All of the files have titles, subtitles, authors, descriptions, but the "find" functions on Koreader seem to ignore that, unless Calibre wrote that information on the device.

Does anyone have a (simple) solution for finding and sorting books easily by the embedded book metadata on Koreader?

[NiLuJe]

Nope, the metadata approach is either provided by Calibre, or not at all.

(i.e., the fallback is file-based search, e.g. by filename).

The metadata collected by KOReader is currently *not* centralized, as such, searching for it would involve walking the full directory tree, which would be extremely slow.

[NiLuJe]

c.f., https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/4951 for the pitched battles on the subject ;p.

[mst]

Thanks!

My gripe with Calibre is that I haven't found a way yet to only sync epub files from my collection and ignore the pdfs...

[NiLuJe]

That's as easy an unticking PDF from the supported format list in the Kobo driver's settings, IIRC. And then probably disabling auto-conversion or... something .

(Or, probably easier, simply not clicking on PDF books in the first place? ).

[NiLuJe]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

The metadata collected by KOReader is currently *not* centralized, as such, searching for it would involve walking the full directory tree, which would be extremely slow.

Okay, that's not *entirely* true.

For the books that were *already* traversed (i.e., they were on-screen in the FileManager at least once, and the metadata extraction completed successfully, i.e., they have a thumbnail), a small amount of metadata does make it to the settings/bookinfo_cache.sqlite3 DB.

No UI bits actually poke into that (besides the FM itself), but that'd be easy enough to query manually, at least.

[mst]

Cool, thank you, all!

In Calibre, I have organized my books (epub and pdf) by bookshelves in custom metadata. Now, I recreated these bookshelves as individual folders on the Kobo and only dragged the epubs over because I read the pdfs only on the computer.

With a Calibre sync, is it possible to keep this organization structure with the individual folders on the Kobo, i.e., the books that are on the custom bookshelves will sync into the folders by the same name?

And what if I just embedded the Calibre metadata with the menu item "embed metadata" and then dragged the books over manually into the folders? Would Koreader then be able to query that metadata?

[pazos]

Originally Posted by mst

Cool, thank you, all!

In Calibre, I have organized my books (epub and pdf) by bookshelves in custom metadata. Now, I recreated these bookshelves as individual folders on the Kobo and only dragged the epubs over because I read the pdfs only on the computer.

With a Calibre sync, is it possible to keep this organization structure with the individual folders on the Kobo, i.e., the books that are on the custom bookshelves will sync into the folders by the same name?

I have no idea what a "calibre sync" is. If you're talking about sending books using calibre to your kobo device it depends on the type of driver used by calibre and your setup within that driver:

- connect to folder and wireless transfer will use a single folder for all books
- kobo driver will use authors/book scheme.

You can configure each driver behaviour in calibre. This has nothing to do with KO.

Originally Posted by mst

And what if I just embedded the Calibre metadata with the menu item "embed metadata" and then dragged the books over manually into the folders? Would Koreader then be able to query that metadata?

NO.

[mst]

Got it. Thank you!!

I'm finally getting the hang of synching books to the Kobo Clara through Calibre. Some questions remain:

I have about 10 bookshelves in Calibre and made 10 folders on the Kobo reflecting the names of the bookshelves. How do I put the books in the bookshelves on Calibre in 10 folders on the Kobo, so that I can browse them by bookshelf?

Whenever I reconnect the Kobo to the laptop, in Calibre, the "on device" column is empty, even though I synched the book previously.

When trying to find a book, the "browse by tag" menu remains empty, even though I set up tags in Calibre. How can I remedy this?

In general: How do you all navigate your libraries? I find Koreader great for reading, but the file organization seems more intuitive in the regular Kobo OS, mainly because I can find books by metadata stored in the files without the need to create some separate database with Calibre.

[mst]

Nope, the metadata approach is either provided by Calibre, or not at all.

(i.e., the fallback is file-based search, e.g. by filename).

The metadata collected by KOReader is currently *not* centralized, as such, searching for it would involve walking the full directory tree, which would be extremely slow.

This seems very strange, though. In the regular Kobo OS, I can organize all books by their metadata and search them as well, all quite quickly.

[pazos]

@mst: you need to understand the differences between a file manager and a library.

A library is what Kobo OS (aka nickel) and calibre use for books. They store books in a database.

A FM is what KOReader uses. Books are no different from other files here. They are just "normal" files within the filesystem hierarchy.

KOReader has some plugins that extend the FM. The most important of them is named "CoverBrowser" and allows you to see book cover and metadata for the current directory. That plugin uses a database internally, as part of the plugin, but was not intended as a library feature.

Other plugin that KO has is "calibre", which allows you to transfer books wirelessly and search book metadata. The kind of metadata this plugin parses is explained in https://github.com/koreader/koreader...data.lua#L4-L6

That's it. Patches welcome to implement a "library app" or "library plugin" that behaves like nickel or calibre. Until that happens you're tied to a file manager and some enhancements on top of it.

[mst]

A filemanager is what KOReader uses. Books are no different from other files here. They are just "normal" files within the filesystem hierarchy. KOReader has some plugins that extend the FM. That's it. Patches welcome to implement a "library app" or "library plugin" that behaves like nickel or calibre. Until that happens you're tied to a file manager and some enhancements on top of it.

Got it, thank you. I guess I was under the wrong impression that KoReader aims to replace Kobo OS (Nickel) with better features, like the customizable corner taps, better pdf reader, etc. I was therefore surprised that it lacked the metadata search function of Kobo OS.

[Frenzie]

From the perspective of many of us directories are better. But indeed an interested party could certainly provide both.

[mst]

From the perspective of many of us directories are better. But indeed an interested party could certainly provide both.

I too prefer KoReader's directories instead of Nickel's bulk library, but I dearly miss the metadata search function in KoReader that is readily available in Nickel.

For the past day I've been using KoReader to read, skim and browse books, but Nickel to find them based on their embedded metadata. This setup provides the best of both worlds for now. In terms of the reading experience itself, KoReader is lightyears ahead of Nickel.

Why does KoReader lack a simple metadata search, especially because it already has the option to display the metadata of books in list format, but falls short of making them available for search? It seems like such a basic and small step for such a great utility to stop short of and makes no sense to me.

[pazos]

Originally Posted by mst

Why does KoReader lack a simple metadata search, especially because it already has the option to display the metadata of books in list format, but falls short of making them available for search? It seems like such a basic and small step for such a great utility to stop short of and makes no sense to me..

Because Nobody Commited Code To Support this feature !!!

Patches welcome.