X-Ray Builder - Windows Application

[gers1978]

I also keeping getting this error:

Attempting to build Author Profile...
Searching for author's page on Amazon...
Could not find author's page on Amazon.
Unable to create Author Profile.
Ensure the author metadata field matches the author's name exactly.

Thing is, if I simply keep trying, it eventually works. This happens on quite a few authors, all well known and all exist on Amazon.

[Ephemerality]

Originally Posted by gers1978

I also keeping getting this error:

Attempting to build Author Profile...
Searching for author's page on Amazon...
Could not find author's page on Amazon.
Unable to create Author Profile.
Ensure the author metadata field matches the author's name exactly.

Thing is, if I simply keep trying, it eventually works. This happens on quite a few authors, all well known and all exist on Amazon.

Just PM'd you a version that should find some paragraphs. I couldn't find that specific book on Shelfari, but the paragraph search works at least.
As for the author page, I'm not surprised; Amazon's format doesn't seem to be consistent for each search. The next version has some improvements on Amazon searching so that may help, it's coming soon I swear! We're working on grabbing data from Goodreads now, to get ready for Shelfari shutting down.

[gers1978]

Thanks.

How the come the setting to switch between Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk is greyed out?

[Ephemerality]

Originally Posted by gers1978

Thanks.

How the come the setting to switch between Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk is greyed out?

Darrenmcg put that option in at some point, intending to add the functionality in. Is there actually much difference in what books are available on the co.uk site?

[darrenmcg]

Amazom.com definitely has a much wider selection of Kindle books, so that's being used for searching and metadata gathering. I did find quite a lot of my books weren't found on .co.uk (I'm based in the UK) when searching, also there can be a slight variation on ASIN numbers. The original intention was to try and use a "local" Amazon site, but it became quite a problem when scraping info, due to differences in page layouts...

[newkindlefun]

Could x-ray builder be used in XP at any point? Or is that never gonna happen?

[gers1978]

What does this error mean:

Attempting to build Author Profile...
Searching for author's page on Amazon...
Author page found on Amazon!
Author's Amazon Page URL: http://www.amazon.com/Lawrence-Krauss/e/B00J19F8CG
No author biography found on Amazon!
Downloading author image...
Resizing and cropping Author image...
Grayscale Base-64 encoded author image created!
Gathering author's other books...
An error occurred while creating the new Author Profile, Start Actions, and/or End Actions files: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

[Ephemerality]

It's having trouble parsing the author page because it doesn't seem to be showing the books (the URL shown in the log isn't the exact one that gets used).
Is that actually the correct author page? This one seems like it might be the actual one, but it doesn't show up in the search unless I search for "Laurence M. Krauss"...
I'll have to add some more error messages to better indicate what that error means.
If the Laurence M. Krauss page is the right one, you should be able to get it working by changing the author to that in the book's metadata.

[Ephemerality]

I've attached a beta version (2.0.11b) to the first post.
Notable changes:

• Tweaks to improve the ability to tap on a character to show its X-Ray entry
  (provided aliases are set up correctly)
  (still needs perfecting)
• Redesigned settings panel
• Added new /r switch for aliases to use regular expressions
• Resolved issue with /c alias switch
• Fix for combo-mobis ('both' format) not reading correct ASIN
• Fix for AZW3s not allowing character-tapping and not displaying excerpts properly
• Ability to only extract rawml without starting any other build processes
• Now builds a .previewData file for new Kindle firmware (use currently unknown)
• Build for Android now uses correct GUID when using internal metadata reader
• Can now pull character info from Goodreads (what little there seems to be)
  -Goodreads is the default at the moment, can change back to Shelfari in settings
  -Highlighted passages info are only placeholders
• Added estimate read times and page counts to StartActions (experimental)

As usual, let me or darrenmcg know if you run into any issues with this version. It is the first step in moving towards Goodreads as a source as Shelfari likely won't be around much longer, so we are working at getting it working properly before that happens.

[gers1978]

Can we make a small change so that we have a button to do the Author Profile, Start Actions, etc AND the X-Ray all with 1 click?

[gers1978]

Getting this in the new version, never ever seen it in old versions

Initial X-Ray built, adding locations and chapters...
No chapters detected.
You can create a file at C:\Users\name\Downloads\xray-builder-gui-v2.0.11b\ext\B00150K3O2.chapters if you want to define chapters manually.
An error occurred while creating the new X-Ray database:
Illegal characters in path.

[gers1978]

Also, given some of the new features of the new version seem to fix problems on the Kindle itself ("Fix for AZW3s not allowing character-tapping and not displaying excerpts properly", etc), does that mean I need to re-create all the X-Ray files for my current books?

[Ephemerality]

Originally Posted by gers1978

Can we make a small change so that we have a button to do the Author Profile, Start Actions, etc AND the X-Ray all with 1 click?

Yeah, we should be able to do that.

Originally Posted by gers1978

Getting this in the new version, never ever seen it in old versions

Initial X-Ray built, adding locations and chapters...
No chapters detected.
You can create a file at C:\Users\name\Downloads\xray-builder-gui-v2.0.11b\ext\B00150K3O2.chapters if you want to define chapters manually.
An error occurred while creating the new X-Ray database:
Illegal characters in path.

I remember running into that during testing at one point, but forget what caused it. I just attached a new version of 2.0.11b that should help trace where that error came from, you can PM it to me.

Originally Posted by gers1978

Also, given some of the new features of the new version seem to fix problems on the Kindle itself ("Fix for AZW3s not allowing character-tapping and not displaying excerpts properly", etc), does that mean I need to re-create all the X-Ray files for my current books?

If you're using AZW3 books then definitely. If not, it probably wouldn't hurt to update them as there were various searching improvements. I'd back up your original X-Rays though as this is a beta version

[gers1978]

In the version you just posted I'm getting this:

UniqueID: 3321914930
Attempting to build Author Profile...
Searching for author's page on Amazon...
An error occurred finding author's page on Amazon.
Unable to create Author Profile.
Ensure the author metadata field matches the author's name exactly.
Search results can be viewed at http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-...s=Daniel+Silva

[Ephemerality]

Originally Posted by gers1978

In the version you just posted I'm getting this:

UniqueID: 3321914930
Attempting to build Author Profile...
Searching for author's page on Amazon...
An error occurred finding author's page on Amazon.
Unable to create Author Profile.
Ensure the author metadata field matches the author's name exactly.
Search results can be viewed at http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-...s=Daniel+Silva

That's weird; it worked for me when I processed a Daniel Silva book. You can turn on the "Save HTML" option in settings so that when it gives that error, there will be an ASIN.authorsearchHtml.txt in the dmp folder which would help figure out why it couldn't find the elements it was looking for.
You may want to download the new version again as well, because I said I attached a new one but then forgot to actually do it