Rename existing books, using template?

[kunkel321]

I Have lots of books in my Calibre library that are named such that the metadata downloader doesn't recognize them. Such as:
"Jim, Jose, Sandy & George Great book of Stuff, Happy Publishing 2011.ISBN.2D4D5H7"
They don't all follow this logic of <name>&<name><title> etc, but many of them do follow patterns.

I see several different patters that show up over and over, so I'd like to set up some different templates that could be applied to different books. (Not while adding them, but changing a book that is already part of the library.) It would be nice if I could use the Edit Metadata dialog to 'parse' a name with one of the templates. Even better if I could visually select a group of books that all had a similar pattern in their name, and bulk parse them...

Does that make sense? Is something like this possible? Should I submit this as a feature request?

[theducks]

You are looking for Bulk Mode Metadata Edit: Search and Replace

Select 2 or more books (with the same problem pattern), Tap E; Switch to the S&R tab
You can save (and recover ) the template of field values used

[fidvo]

Originally Posted by theducks

You are looking for Bulk Mode Metadata Edit: Search and Replace

Select 2 or more books (with the same problem pattern), Tap E; Switch to the S&R tab
You can save (and recover ) the template of field values used

Specifically, the Search and Replace uses Regular Expressions, so if you can create your templates in regex, you can then save them in the Search and Replace screen and use them as needed.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by theducks

You are looking for Bulk Mode Metadata Edit: Search and Replace

Select 2 or more books (with the same problem pattern), Tap E; Switch to the S&R tab
You can save (and recover ) the template of field values used

Originally Posted by fidvo

Specifically, the Search and Replace uses Regular Expressions, so if you can create your templates in regex, you can then save them in the Search and Replace screen and use them as needed.

Backup your library before using Bulk S&R - if you screw up there's no undo. If your library is 'big' you could create a test library from a subset via the right click Copy to library feature.

BR

[kunkel321]

Thanks for the tips! I may have found a bug. I'm not seeing a bug thread, so I'll put it here for now. I wanted to make a temporary library and copy some books to it for testing. I got an error when trying to make it. See image:


The error message:
========================
calibre, version 2.58.0
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>ConstraintError</b>:ConstraintError: NOT NULL constraint failed: __js_settings.val

calibre 2.58 [64bit] embedded-python: True is64bit: True
Windows-7-6.1.7601-SP1 Windows ('64bit', 'WindowsPE')
('Windows', '7', '6.1.7601')
Python 2.7.9
Windows: ('7', '6.1.7601', 'SP1', 'Multiprocessor Free')
Successfully initialized third party plugins: Job Spy && Recipe Reader && Find Duplicates && Reading List && Count Pages && Clean Metadata && X-Ray Creator && KindleUnpack - The Plugin
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\dialogs\choose_library.py", line 185, in accept
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\dialogs\choose_library.py", line 130, in perform_action
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\actions\choose_library.py", line 607, in choose_library_callback
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\ui.py", line 685, in library_moved
File "calibre_plugins.job_spy.ui", line 91, in library_changed
File "calibre_plugins.job_spy.ui", line 1402, in migrate_preferences_to_settings
File "c:\cygwin64\home\kovid\sw\build\apsw-3.8.2-r1\src\cursor.c", line 231, in resetcursor
ConstraintError: ConstraintError: NOT NULL constraint failed: __js_settings.val
================
It does appear that the library was created though...

[DaltonST]

Originally Posted by kunkel321

Thanks for the tips! I may have found a bug. I'm not seeing a bug thread, so I'll put it here for now. I wanted to make a temporary library and copy some books to it for testing. I got an error when trying to make it. See image:
image deleted - mod

The error message:
========================
calibre, version 2.58.0
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>ConstraintError</b>:ConstraintError: NOT NULL constraint failed: __js_settings.val

calibre 2.58 [64bit] embedded-python: True is64bit: True
Windows-7-6.1.7601-SP1 Windows ('64bit', 'WindowsPE')
('Windows', '7', '6.1.7601')
Python 2.7.9
Windows: ('7', '6.1.7601', 'SP1', 'Multiprocessor Free')
Successfully initialized third party plugins: Job Spy && Recipe Reader && Find Duplicates && Reading List && Count Pages && Clean Metadata && X-Ray Creator && KindleUnpack - The Plugin
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\dialogs\choose_library.py", line 185, in accept
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\dialogs\choose_library.py", line 130, in perform_action
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\actions\choose_library.py", line 607, in choose_library_callback
File "site-packages\calibre\gui2\ui.py", line 685, in library_moved
File "calibre_plugins.job_spy.ui", line 91, in library_changed
File "calibre_plugins.job_spy.ui", line 1402, in migrate_preferences_to_settings
File "c:\cygwin64\home\kovid\sw\build\apsw-3.8.2-r1\src\cursor.c", line 231, in resetcursor
ConstraintError: ConstraintError: NOT NULL constraint failed: __js_settings.val
================
It does appear that the library was created though...

You really should keep all of your plug-ins updated. You clearly are using an old version of the plug-in that caused this error.

I will let you figure out which it is.


DaltonST

[kunkel321]

Originally Posted by DaltonST

You really should keep all of your plug-ins updated. You clearly are using an old version of the plug-in that caused this error.
I will let you figure out which it is.
DaltonST

Hmm... Yes, thanks for the tip. I was actually just going through my plugins and realized that I installed them to try them out, but don't actually use any of them.

Looks like this one is KindleUnpack.