[Metadata Source Plugin] FictionDB

[davidfor]

I have updated the plugin to fix the recent problems. These were caused by several changes to the book details page. I have not done a lot of testing, but it does seem to be working properly now.

[MegAnne]

Is this plugin working for everybody else? In my case, the plugin runs for an appropriate time but no metadata is found.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by MegAnne

Is this plugin working for everybody else? In my case, the plugin runs for an appropriate time but no metadata is found.

I discovered while I was porting it to Python 3 that it did not get any results. At first, I thought it was errors n the changes, but when I tested the released version of the plugin with the released version of calibre, it failed in exactly the same way. There were several people in the calibre/Python 3 discussion who basically said they would not update to the Python 3 version of calibre until the plugin was ported, so I asked if it was working for any of them. I had no responses.

I think this stopped working at the end of April. That is based on when the last book I added to my library which has a FictionDB identifier. The book added on 25/04/2020 has the identifier, but, one added on 03/05/2020 does not. Nor do any added later than this.

This was a few weeks ago and haven't returned to it. That is partly due to time, and partly due to the fact I haven't worked out how to solve the problem I found (the site makes heavy use of redirects). And, as no-one seemed to have noticed the plugin had been broken for over five months, I haven't put any importance on working on it. I have been far to busy breaking other plugins.

[Donatzsky]

I get the following error when trying to install version 1.2.0:

calibre, version 5.2.0
ERROR: Install plugin failed: A problem occurred while installing this plugin. This plugin will now be uninstalled. Please post the error message in details below into the forum thread for this plugin and restart calibre.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "calibre/gui2/dialogs/plugin_updater.py", line 731, in _install_clicked
  File "calibre/customize/ui.py", line 472, in add_plugin
  File "calibre/customize/ui.py", line 61, in load_plugin
  File "calibre/customize/zipplugin.py", line 282, in load
  File "importlib/__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1014, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 991, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 975, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 671, in _load_unlocked
  File "calibre/customize/zipplugin.py", line 181, in exec_module
  File "calibre_plugins.fictiondb.__init__", line 11, in <module>
    from urllib import quote, urlencode
ImportError: cannot import name 'quote' from 'urllib' (/opt/calibre/lib/calibre-extensions/python-lib.bypy.frozen/urllib/__init__.pyc)

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Donatzsky

I get the following error when trying to install version 1.2.0:

calibre, version 5.2.0
ERROR: Install plugin failed: A problem occurred while installing this plugin. This plugin will now be uninstalled. Please post the error message in details below into the forum thread for this plugin and restart calibre.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "calibre/gui2/dialogs/plugin_updater.py", line 731, in _install_clicked
  File "calibre/customize/ui.py", line 472, in add_plugin
  File "calibre/customize/ui.py", line 61, in load_plugin
  File "calibre/customize/zipplugin.py", line 282, in load
  File "importlib/__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1014, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 991, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 975, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 671, in _load_unlocked
  File "calibre/customize/zipplugin.py", line 181, in exec_module
  File "calibre_plugins.fictiondb.__init__", line 11, in <module>
    from urllib import quote, urlencode
ImportError: cannot import name 'quote' from 'urllib' (/opt/calibre/lib/calibre-extensions/python-lib.bypy.frozen/urllib/__init__.pyc)

That is to be expected as the plugin has not been ported to Python 3.

But, was it working with the previous version of calibre you were using? See my post immediately before yours.

[JSWolf]

The problem with plugins like this is that the website can change and then the plugin no longer works properly until it's fixed to handle the website changes.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem with plugins like this is that the website can change and then the plugin no longer works properly until it's fixed to handle the website changes.

That is an expected problem with using web-scraping. It happens for all the metadata source plugins. But, it isn't the real problem with this plugin. The problem is that the web site changed 5 months ago and nobody noticed.

[MegAnne]

Originally Posted by davidfor

That is an expected problem with using web-scraping. It happens for all the metadata source plugins. But, it isn't the real problem with this plugin. The problem is that the web site changed 5 months ago and nobody noticed.

Well, I know why I didn't notice. Weird enough, one of the unexpected consequences of working from home, is that I end working more hours. No time for my library until little ago.

[iamagloworm]

Just wanted to let you know, I am still very appreciative of this plugin and would love to be able to use when it is updated some time in the future. Thanks for creating, sharing and updating!

[brianswilson]

I received the following error when installing the FictionDB plugin version 1.2.0 on Calibre version 5.7.X:

calibre, version 5.7.0
ERROR: Install plugin failed: A problem occurred while installing this plugin. This plugin will now be uninstalled. Please post the error message in details below into the forum thread for this plugin and restart calibre.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre\gui2\dialogs\plugin_updater.py", line 709, in _install_clicked
File "calibre\customize\ui.py", line 472, in add_plugin
File "calibre\customize\ui.py", line 61, in load_plugin
File "calibre\customize\zipplugin.py", line 293, in load
File "importlib\__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1014, in _gcd_import
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 991, in _find_and_load
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 975, in _find_and_load_unlocked
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 671, in _load_unlocked
File "calibre\customize\zipplugin.py", line 192, in exec_module
File "calibre_plugins.fictiondb.__init__", line 11, in <module>
ImportError: cannot import name 'quote' from 'urllib' (C:\Program Files (x86)\Calibre2\app\bin\python-lib.bypy.frozen\urllib\__init__.pyc)

[capink]

This plugin is abandoned now. First it stopped working in Calibre versions based on python2 (calibre < 5.0). And although it installed fine and did not throw any error, it was useless as it was not downloading any metadata since the site changed, and the plugin was not updated to keep up with these changes.

Consequently, it was not ported to use python3 based calibre versions (calibre5). So in those versions it throws the error you just posted. Porting it to python3 will only stop that error, but the plugin will not function.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by capink

This plugin is abandoned now. First it stopped working in Calibre versions based on python2 (calibre < 5.0). And although it installed fine and did not throw any error, it was useless as it was not downloading any metadata since the site changed, and the plugin was not updated to keep up with these changes.

Consequently, it was not ported to use python3 based calibre versions (calibre5). So in those versions it throws the error you just posted. Porting it to python3 will only stop that error, but the plugin will not function.

Given that this plugin is broken and won't be fixed, I suggest this thread be closed with the last post saying why the thread is closed and in the first post updated to say that this plugin no longer works and is not being updated.

[BetterRed]

Given davidfor's recent posts in this tread - e.g. #82, it may a bit premature to say the plugin has been abandoned. The plugin hasn't been maintained because no one complained.

The Viewers just added Read Aloud feature may have prompted users to upgrade to version 5.7, which has lead to the 'flood' of posts about metadata download plugins not working.

BR

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

The Viewers just added Read Aloud feature may have prompted users to upgrade to version 5.7, which has lead to the 'flood' of posts about metadata download plugins not working.

There's also a mostly-working pre-release version of DeDRM available for Py3 now too. I suspect the user who posted in all of the threads might've upgraded due to that.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Given davidfor's recent posts in this tread - e.g. #82, it may a bit premature to say the plugin has been abandoned. The plugin hasn't been maintained because no one complained.

At this point, I think abandoned is correct. There was no reaction to my post or the other places that I have mentioned it. No one seems to have actually missed it. I'm not very interested in fixing it and would only be doing it for the coding exercise.

If someone wants to look at it, I can post the last version I have. But, the Python 3 changes are very basic. Other than that, the URL used needs to be changed and then work out how to handle the redirects that the site does.