[GUI Plugin] Comicalibre - Comic Vine metadata processor

[Pewsplosions]

I've been looking for a good way to organize all my comic books and get metadata. It seems as though the only Comic Vine metadata plugin is really old and doesn't work anymore. And doesn't seem like it got everything I wanted anyway. Besides that I've seen some cool stuff but usually just cobbled together processes involving other applications and metadata styles.

So I created this plugin and thought I'd share it. It is not exactly a metadata plugin in Calibre terms. Its a GUI plugin that gets metadata from comic vine and adds it to Calibre. Probably not the greatest way to do it, but its what came to mind so its how I did it. I'm not very experienced with Python and Calibre wasn't immediately obvious and I only really wanted to spend the weekend on this. So here is the results.

You can see my full write up at the github repository. But here is a quick overview of the process to make this work.

1. It needs some custom columns so create those in your Calibre.
Characters with lookup characters - Ampersand separated text, shown in the Tag browser.
Creators with lookup creators - Ampersand separated text, shown in the Tag browser.
Story Arcs with lookup storyarcs - Ampersand separated text, shown in the Tag browser.
Physical Copy with lookup physicalcopy - Yes/No
Comic Vine Volume ID with lookup comicvinevolumeid - Integers
Comic Vine Issue ID with lookup comicvineissueid - Integers

2a. If you haven't imported the books yet, or can remove and re-import. Rename all your files. Make it Title --- v1234 n1234 where Title is what you want the book title to be, the number after v is the Comic Vine volume ID (found on the main volume web site URL after the 4050-) and the number after the n is the issue number. Then just import them into Calibre, the file name should become the book title. Run the first option in Comicalibre dialog. It should then populate all the metadata from Comic Vine.

2b. If you have all your books in Calibre and have already set up the series numbers. Instead of renaming the books and all the import stuff, you can just rename your series to match the volume ID from Comic Vine. Then select the second option in Comicalibre. It'll do the same thing as the other way only it'll get the volume ID from the series name and the issue number from the series index. It'll also rename the series back to the volume name.

This isn't a magical metadata plugin so read carefully if you are afraid to lose data. It does replace everything and requires the two pieces of data be exactly what you are wanting.

There is more info on the readme above. If you find any glaring errors that pop up feel free to let me know. I don't know if I can really spend much more time on this so if you want more features and such, can always fork the code.

Hopefully this helps some people. And thanks for checking it out!

Moderator Notice
New users are restricted for a short time as a SPAM reduction policy. I have replaced the original attachment with that from post 2

I can't seem to edit my original post so I'll just put this here. I noticed something small, even if physical copy is yes or no, it was always marking it as no. So since the third option is essentially to refresh metadata, one may have already marked this field as they wanted it and it is not a Comic Vine field so I made it not change this now.

So here is the new zip. Just in case anyone wants to try it out. Thanks!

[vanishedsarah]

Unable to use plug-in, it doesn't recognize that I've restarted Calibre

calibre, version 6.9.0
ERROR: Must restart: You must restart calibre before you can configure the <b>Comicalibre</b> plugin