[GUI Plugin] Kindle Collections (Update)

[melovesflying]

If it helps, I have the latest firmware but I had to reinstall Python to make LibrarianSync once again after updating from 5.6.5. These are my current settings for the plugin and the custom column.

[NiLuJe]

@melovesflying: Err, why use a CS column type? Why not a simple tristate one (i.e., Yes/No/??).

I vaguely remember that those are stored as an int, maybe, so just check create & match on True or 1 and voilà? [EDIT: Plus a bit of regex name switch to avoid the collection being named "1" or "True" or whatever is the actual underlying data type].

It's very late/early here, so take that w/ a grain of salt...
On the plus side, I do use a column like that in my own setup, even if I never based collections on it (I think?), so I might be able to check how much sense I'm making...

---

Barring that, you're missing a "match on" for the actual value stored in your column when a book is actually read to do anything useful. (Maybe? Brain is mush here).

[melovesflying]

My original CS column was actually a Y/N one. I changed it when I saw the instructions here for custom columns. I'll experiment on that later and I'll report back here.

[melovesflying]

So I'm still stumped. I created a new custom column with the following settings:

Lookup name: finished
Column heading: Finished Books
Column type: Yes/No

I've also marked the books to be included in the Finished Books collection using the dropdown menu on that column so there are now checkmarks for the finished books.

When it comes to placing values on the "Customize collections to create from Calibre", that's where I get stuck. I choose "Create" for the Finished Books column but I have no idea where to place the values and what kind of values to place (the lookup name? "1"? "True"?). I'm guessing this is why Calibre won't generate the collection.

Any advice? I've a lot of books stored so having a collection for books I've finished reading is important (any format is okay with me just as long as I can make that collection). It's also the only reason why I decided to jailbreak mine (thank you @eschwartz for that).

[NiLuJe]

@melovesflying: Is the goal to create a collecton for "Finished Books" or "Unfinished Books", or both?

EDIT: On my end, simply ticking "Create" for a tristate column does the right thing: anything with that column set to true ends up in a collection named after the human-readable name of said column.

So, basically, just set the action to Create, forget all my crappy ramblings from yesterday and leave everything else blank, and you're done .

=== Kindle Collections 1.7.16 PREVIEW Report

Preview only - no collections have actually been modified on the Kindle.


Collections saved to the Kindle:

    Collection  Managed By  Books  Change
    ----------  ----------  -----  ------
    Read        Calibre     5      Replaced (from column Read)
    Test        Kindle      1      None (preserve Kindle-only is True)

No collections selected to delete from the Kindle.



=== Settings:

Column: Read
        Action:      Create
        Prefix:      ""
        Suffix:      ""
        Minimum:     ""
        Ignore:      ""
        Include:     ""
        Rename from: ""
        Rename to:   ""
        Split on:    ""

Never delete/modify these Kindle collections:      
Action when toolbar icon is clicked:               Show menu (default)
Preserve existing Kindle-only collections:         True
Ignore prefix/suffix when comparing Calibre names: True
Ignore case when pattern matching:                 True
Reset collection times:                            True
Ignore exported collections db:                    False
Only build a diff database:                        False
Kindle Model:                                      540
Calibre Personal doc tag:                          +Pdoc
Kindle collections file:                           /run/media/niluje/Kindle/system/collections.json
Plugin customization file:                         /home/niluje/.config/calibre/plugins/Kindle Collections.json
System Encoding:                                   UTF-8

A search for ondevice:true AND #read:true confirms that it's doing the right thing.

Note that my Read column is tristate, but that shouldn't be a factor here compared to a boolean one.

[melovesflying]

I'm just after the "Finished Books". It worked! thank you so much for this and all the work you've done here

I'm guessing it didn't work at first because I tried doing it immediately after updating my firmware and before I reinstalled Python to make LibrarianSync work again after updating. Now I feel stupid. Haha

[melovesflying]

Also, if I move a book to the Finished Books collection on my Kindle, what's the best way to sync it via Calibre so that the book will also be added to that same custom column on Calibre (if it's possible at all)? Or I can only mark the books manually on that column?

[NiLuJe]

@melovesflying: See the comments about using LS in the first post.

But AFAIR:
Hmm, keeping the books in the collection on the Kindle side is easy enough (rely on using incremental updates, and do an export in LS before pluging in).
But keeping a full sync with a Calibre column, trickier, since that's incompatible with incremental updates, and I don't even remember how the Kindle -> Custom Column stuff works (being something that I've never used myself).

Might be possible, but doing the same trick without incremental updates will make the the two types (Calibre/LS) of imports/exports slower if you have a large amount of books/collections.

I think some of that stuff is detailed in the first post.

EDIT: It is, briefly. And apparently Yes/No columns are supported for import, so, hey.
Make a backup of your Calibre database just in case, and go for it?

[melovesflying]

So I tried it just now. I set the plugin first to create collections for the custom column and the series. Once it's done, I got 398 collections. I then imported the Kindle collections to Calibre. Everything looks good.

I then set the plugin to create collections only from the Imported Kindle Collections column. When I clicked on preview though, it generated 619 collections, which is way more than the number of created collections of the series + finished books. The report says that the collections were created from the Imported Kindle Collections column + other (no idea what the "other" refers to, though).

To be on the safe side, I'll probably just set the plugin to create collections from series and the Custom Column and manually tick the Finished Books column in Calibre. But I'll use the Import Collections from Calibre plugin as backup.

No regrets jailbreaking my Kindle for this awesome plugin. Thanks for all the hard work, NiLuJe!

[NiLuJe]

@melovesflying: Huh. I'm not familiar with the Import feature, so I'm afraid I can't be of much help, sorry .

[melovesflying]

Hey, you've already helped me a lot so thank you for that. Cheers!

[Adin Terim]

I've been using this plugin for a while and haven't had a problem until now. When I tried to import my collections into calibre earlier today it erased everything in my collections column and the view collections option states that there are no collections.

I've tried deleting my collections on my kindle and the restoring them with Librarian Sync, but the plugin still says that there are no collections on the device.

I am using a Voyage with firmware version 5.6.5 (2730300038). Do you have any idea on what I can do to get the plugin to read my collections again?

[NiLuJe]

@Adin Terim: You need an up to date 'export' done from Librarian Sync for the plugin's 'import' function to see the current collection status.

[Adin Terim]

I had already done a new export, but that didn't work.

I got working though. I just scraped info from calibre's metadata file and the exported collection info from librarian sync to create my own collections.json

[GruberMa]

Is there a way to exclude a specific book when creating collections?

As Calibre does not seem to provide an option to predefine possible values for custom columns, I created a dummy book containing all possible values for #genre.

In the Collections plugin, I set a minimum of 2 books per category so that categories that only contain the dummy book are not created at all. But the dummy book shows up in every collection when there is at least one other book in it.

I could delete all files associated with the dummy book to solve the issue, but this creates another issuse with the SmartEject plugin detecting books available in the library but not on the device ...




Edit: A minute after posting, a new approach came up in my mind - I simply edited the query used by SmartEject, so that my dummy book is excluded when comparing library and device content. Problem solved!