[GUI Plugin] LibraryThing Match

[Bradles]

Thanks for the feedback sarahhemmm.

can't find a way to unmatch some books

There's nothing built-in, but I was able to use edit metadata for multiple books. There's some instructions towards the end of the user guide (which is attached to the first post in this thread) for clearing the Librarything_id column.

some books which show 95% but should not be matched

It's interesting that some books show 95% without being a match. Feel free to post the title + author here (both calibre and LT) or message me and I'll see if anything can be improved.

[sarahemmm]

Originally Posted by Bradles

It's interesting that some books show 95% without being a match. Feel free to post the title + author here (both calibre and LT) or message me and I'll see if anything can be improved.

Owen, Sri - Sri Owen's Indonesian Food gives a 96% match with Owen, Sri - Indonesian Regional Food and Cookery

There were several when I did the first run, so I will delete the linking column data and retry.

[sarahemmm]

Some more results, some of which _should_ match:

Alexievich, Svetlana - Second-Hand Time == Aleksievich, Svetlana - Second-hand time (96%)

Bennett, Sj - Murder Most Royal == Bennett, S. J. - Murder most royal (95%)

Bridge, Ann - The Lighthearted Quest == Bridge, Ann - The Light-Hearted Quest (84%)

Craven, Mike - The Puppet Show == Craven, M. W. - The puppet show (92%)

Davies, Robertson - Salterton Trilogy Omnibus == Davies, Robertson - The Salterton trilogy (94%, though I think this is reasonable)

Feynman, Richard P. & Leighton, Robert B. & Sands, Matthew - Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher == Feynman, Richard Phillips - Six easy pieces (87%, presumably because LT returns only 1 author)

Indridason, Arnaldur - Jar City: A Reykjavi*k Thriller == Arnaldur Indriðason - Jar City (77%)

Joad, Cyril Edwin Mitchinson - Guide to Philosophy == Joad, C. E. M. - Guide to philosophy (89%)

I thought there were some more non-matches, but maybe I was mistaken. Anyway, far more importantly, all the 100% matches are correct. Those were by far the largest category in my list

[Bradles]

Sorry, I meant to reply ages ago...

Those percentages look reasonable to me. You could always adjust the threshold up from the default 90% and manually match any false negatives.

Anyway, once you've got through the initial "bulk" match, regular maintenance should be much smoother.

[sarahemmm]

Yes, all smooth sailing now

I think this (set the match level very high initially) is probably a good way to go. Though it would help to have an 'unmatch' option...

[readandread]

@Bradles Can someone confirm that the connection is currently not working? I get a "<HTTPError 403: 'Forbidden'>" error.

Not sure if this is related to their recent DDOS attack. Mabe not everything is up and running yet.

[Bradles]

Same 403 for me. I've reached out to LibraryThing support.

[readandread]

Originally Posted by Bradles

Same 403 for me. I've reached out to LibraryThing support.

It's always a much better feeling when you're not the only one with the problem.

[jjmcgaffey]

Tim did say one of the security measures they took was only accept member requests. Not sure this plugin counts as a member request, even if you're logged in. Hopefully things will settle down soon.

[Bradles]

Encouraging response from LibraryThing Support:

From: LibraryThing information
Date: Sat, 9 Sept 2023 at 03:40
Subject: Re: JSON Books API

Hi Brad,

Thank you for reaching out, and my apologies for the trouble.

We suspect that these 403-Forbidden messages are the result of our recent move to Cloudflare, to protect ourselves from DDoS attacks like the one that brought us down over the weekend and into this week. You can read about that attack here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/353456.

Our developers are aware of the issue, and are looking into it. Hopefully it will be resolved soon.

Please keep me updated on your status, and let me know if you have any questions, in the meantime.

Best,
Abigail
Member Support

[Bradles]

I've uploaded a new version which fixes the 403 Forbidden error. As I suspected, Cloudflare was blocking the request due to the user agent, so it was simply a matter of adding a header to the request.

calibre should recognize there's an updated version in the fullness of time.

[Wiggo]

Thank you Bradles, it works again.

[bulletproof2k]

Hi, I'm getting this message:

Cannot find custom column #librarything_id

For full functionality, you should create or specify a custom column to store LibraryThing IDs. See the LibraryThing Match documentation for further details.

[bulletproof2k]

Thanks for the plugin, I figured it out myself, it wasn't so difficult

[Bradles]