[GUI Plugin] Goodreads Sync - Page 19

kiwidude · 10-01-2011, 11:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chumpo

Edit: Nevermind. I figured it out.

Instructions for other idiots like me:

After adding a column or two for goodread shelf info, go into plugin config and edit tag mappings to to your liking. Finally, and this is the part I skipped, you have to set sync actions for each of your shelves.

See, I thought that "tag mappings" took care of that and that sync actions were for some other actions if that you might want to perform when syncing. Phew.

Hi Chumpo, welcome to MobileRead.

Glad you got it working but just to add a minor correction to the above. The tag mappings have no relevance to the "Sync from shelf" menu items. The only thing you need to do for Sync from shelf to work is the second thing you mention, of specifying what action you want to take place when you sync.

The tag mappings are used for the "Download shelves as tags" and "Upload tags as shelves" menu items, which are the "alternate" way of syncing that some users wanted. Download shelves as tags is for people who already have a collection of books on various genre type shelves on Goodreads, and want to use their shelf names as Calibre tags. The Upload tags as shelves feature is for the reverse, where you would like to use the tags you have in Calibre to populate a range of shelves on Goodreads. In both these cases, the tag mappings allow you to cater for differences in naming conventions between the website and names you use in Calibre, plus ensure that only the mapped subset of your tag/shelf names is performed in that operation.

kiwidude · 10-01-2011, 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElMiko

kiwidude, thank you for your hard work on all your plugins. Top-notch all around (Reading List, in particular, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy)!

Thanks for the kind words, very much appreciated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ElMiko

I have a couple of questions on sync-ing functionality, and I'd be grateful if you could provide some additional color.

1) Is it possible to sync from Calibre to Goodreads? That is, versus sync-ing from Goodreads to Calibre. Would the technical process for transferring metadata such as Rating and Date Read be different from the process for transferring Title & Author via the "Add to shelf" command?

2)Is it possible to sync your personal Rating data from Goodreads to Calibre? By that, I don't mean the general "Edit Metadata" command, but rather strictly through a Goodreads sync (and applying your rating not the average Goodreads rating).

The answer to both these questions is unfortunately no, currently. It has been asked for a couple of times and if you read back a half dozen pages or so you can see some of the mentions of it.

I agree they are good ideas and clearly things others would find useful. As I have mentioned previously my hesitation around such functionality was (a) my lack of knowledge of the "reviews" part of the Goodreads API, and (b) a concern that it would increase the number of API calls that the plugin makes, because their API isn't really designed to "optimally" do the things you mention. There are restrictions issues by Goodreads on their API about how many calls per second you can do to their website, and at the time I wrote this plugin I wasn't sure if it was going to turn into some incredibly popular thing that would immeditely get it banned so I took a conservative approach.

As I mentioned in this post I do actually use this plugin myself nowadays and wholeheartedly agree with others that sticking to "what minimises the calls to Goodreads" is unfortunately partially in conflict with "what would make this plugin easier to use with less steps". To be brutally honest it needs a rethinking from scratch, and that is something I haven't had the time or energy to do as there has always been other plugin priorities. It *will* happen one day.

A quick re-read of this thread and some of the changes to look at would be:

when adding to a shelf, being able to specify the review data of date read & rating, either manually or pulled from calibre columns. Might be limited to the "read" shelf.
when syncing from a shelf, offering the option to retrieve the rating and date read into calibre columns. Might be limited to the "read" shelf. May also support retrieving the review text into a comments column as well.
support indicating that you "own" a book (if the Goodreads API supports this)
trying to find a slightly easier way to "switch editions", for when your linked book isn't the best choice (e.g. it has zero pages, different cover edition etc). Right now I do this by bringing up the Linked Book dialog, doing a Search, clicking on the "Editions" hyperlink on the page, clicking "Switching to that edition" on the website, then dragging back onto the Linked book dialog.
offering an option for users to sync from multiple shelves at once. Not something I would use (I only use a "read" shelf) but I can understand how others with more shelves would find it painful to choose each in turn.
offering an option for users to add to multiple shelves at once. Again not something I personally would use but I understand why some would.
offering a way to do a bulk "link to goodreads", rather than presenting the dialog one at a time. This is a bit less important given the Goodreads Metadata plugin offers a bulk way to link, but if users don't want to use that or wish more control this could be useful.
revisiting how the Add to shelf dialog works. Currently when you select books it calls Goodreads to download the contents of your shelf, so it can tell you whether the book is already on the shelf or not. However if you know you are adding books to a shelf for the first time then it slows you down particularly if there are a lot of books on that shelf. Perhaps it would be better to just not do that check and just show a message afterwards if it was already on that shelf.
perhaps supporting actions for when you *add* to a shelf, not just when you sync from it. This might control some of the behaviour above. Right now you have to Sync from a shelf to have any tags or whatever updated. But in fact you could define like a macro a set of actions to take place when you add a book to a particular shelf. For instance when adding to my Read shelf I could put in place rules that do all the following:
- set my "#read" custom column to yes
- set my "#dateread" column to today
- remove a tag of to-read
Taking that a step further, maybe it isn't an "add to shelf" action at all, and is just some new menu option of "My Actions" or whatever that your script appears on under a name like "Mark book as read". Then it could have additional steps such as:
- add to my "read" Goodreads shelf
- upload rating to Goodreads review
- upload #dateread column to Goodreads review
- remove from my reading list plugin list called "Reading"

As you can see I'm open to radical suggestions to make this a bit more user friendly rather than API focused like it is currently.

ElMiko · 10-01-2011, 02:13 PM

Ugh, I apologize for asking questions already answered. I did read the first ten pages or so of the thread before figuring that if it hadn't been asked by then, I was in the clear. That'll learn me.

As if that weren't enough, your response was embarrassingly thorough.

It's clear that your vision (or, I guess I should say "the collective vision") for this plugin is quite broad. To be clear, Goodreads Sync already offers far more functionality than having no Goodreads Sync would! As with all your work, I look forward to what the future will bring.

kiwidude · 10-01-2011, 02:33 PM

@ElMiko - no apologies needed at all. I don't expect every user to read through 19 pages of a thread in detail

. Your post was good in that it prompted me to attempt to summarise the "todo" list of requests, so I can point people to it for further debate until I actually get around to hopefully implementing some of it.

CWatkinsNash · 10-02-2011, 07:54 PM

I'm baaaack! :-)

Kiwidude, you may recall that I started the use this plugin previously but it just wasn't working for how I was doing things. There have been many changes since then, not only to the plugin but also to the way I do things. So I came here to ask what might have been a silly question, but then I thought, why don't I just **try it** and see.

Sooo... guess who is the newest, most fervent user of the plugin!! Always happens this way, don't it? Except this time I don't have a list of requests, because it's doing exactly what I want it to do.

I guess my only question is this - is there any change regarding the extent of the API call limitations? And related to that - I'm not sure how the API calls work for GR. What constitutes a single "hit"? For example, if I link 10 books, then add those same 10 books to the to-read shelf, then also "upload tags as shelves", is that 20 calls? 21? 30? Forgive me if that's been covered already, but there are 274 comments in this thread and my skimming missed a lot.

Thanks!
Christa

kiwidude · 10-03-2011, 05:54 AM

Ahhh, the lovely CWatkinsNash returns, welcome back...

I do recall your previous post, in fact I read it again yesterday as part of building the list of requests I posted above. It would seem that you have indeed changed your workflow, because the plugin hasn't changed very much since then...

AFAIK Goodreads haven't changed their T&C, not that I have looked recently. However since I have not once had any email indication of users misbehaving with the plugin in it's current guise, and the number of plugin users is extremely low in comparison to the number of calibre users I'm feeling more willing to open the floodgates a little with it to make the plugin more user friendly.

In terms of exactly how many calls are being done for the various scenarios you mention, I couldn't tell you without trawling through the code. Off the top of my head, linking a book is one call per book. When you add a book to a shelf and bring up that dialog, there will be one call per 200 books already on that shelf just to validate the books you are adding are not already on there. Then there will be one call per book to actually add the book to a shelf. For the upload tags as shelves functionality, there will be one call per tag (shelf) per book. So it all adds up pretty quickly.

CWatkinsNash · 10-03-2011, 01:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kiwidude

Ahhh, the lovely CWatkinsNash returns, welcome back...

Thank you! It's good to be back.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kiwidude

It would seem that you have indeed changed your workflow, because the plugin hasn't changed very much since then...

Yes, after posting I went back and looked as well, and I believe my issues last time were a result of "workflow block" - I wasn't able to see the clear way from Point A to B due to my own convoluted preconceptions and procedures. I recently decided to clean house, and created a new library containing only the books I now feel I will actually read. That actually got my "useful" book total below the 4-digit threshold (not by much, mind you) and allowed me to use a tighter, more simplified method of starting over.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kiwidude

AFAIK Goodreads haven't changed their T&C, not that I have looked recently. However since I have not once had any email indication of users misbehaving with the plugin in it's current guise, and the number of plugin users is extremely low in comparison to the number of calibre users I'm feeling more willing to open the floodgates a little with it to make the plugin more user friendly.

In terms of exactly how many calls are being done for the various scenarios you mention, I couldn't tell you without trawling through the code. Off the top of my head, linking a book is one call per book. When you add a book to a shelf and bring up that dialog, there will be one call per 200 books already on that shelf just to validate the books you are adding are not already on there. Then there will be one call per book to actually add the book to a shelf. For the upload tags as shelves functionality, there will be one call per tag (shelf) per book. So it all adds up pretty quickly.

This is very helpful. You are correct, I just checked and there is still the "one request per second" rule. I also reviewed the discussion thread on GR (you know the one, you were in it) to remind myself of their responses at that time. I did some quick calculations, and based on the books I did yesterday, my current method seem to keep my average pretty well below the "calls per minute average" red-flag threshold. (I tend to get sidetracked by Words with Friends between batches, that helps.)

booklover81 · 10-23-2011, 08:00 AM

Ok.. Maybe I'm having a really blonde moment today but I can't seem to figure out how to Upload tags as shelves...I've done the tag mapping and the 'sync from shelf' editing ..still nothing...can someone help?

Domdom · 10-31-2011, 03:15 PM

Howdy!
Just installed this interesting plugin. Something seems wrong, it displays correctly in the toolbar but quickly (after first action), simply disappear and features are not accessible!
Using latest versions of all programs. Plugin is authenticated with goodreads site ...
Any idea?
---
update: as soon as I disconnect my Kindle, toolbar buttons are back ... weird ... shouldnt they stay there even with Kindle connected? maybe a Calibre issue ....

kiwidude · 10-31-2011, 03:42 PM

@DomDom - It's my "favourite" (cough) issue with Calibre again I'm afraid. It catches many new users out. Calibre has different toolbars for when a device is connected versus when it is not. Go to Preferences -> Toolbars and make sure you also add the plugin to the toolbar for "The main toolbar when a device is connected".

@booklover81 - my apologies, I somehow missed your post. Did you get your problem sorted?

Scorpionx · 11-06-2011, 06:32 PM

Hi ^^ When I try to authorize plugin with Goodreads I get this error

Quote:

The request contacting Goodreads has failed. Please try again.
TypeError:'NoneType' object is not iterable

What can i do with this?

kiwidude · 11-08-2011, 02:34 PM

@Scorpionx - welcome to MobileRead. Did you get your problem sorted?

Try running calibre in debug mode, and PM the contents to me if you are still having issues. I doubt there is much I can do about it though - it is most likely there was just some temporary issue with Goodreads (or a more permanent one with your Goodreads account).

ElMiko · 11-08-2011, 04:13 PM

The Goodreads site is down (at least on the east coast of the US), which may be why the plugin is having trouble communicating with it. Try going to goodreads directly and see if the site is up.

EDIT:
Give it another whirl. Goodreads is back up again.

Domdom · 11-13-2011, 11:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kiwidude

@DomDom - It's my "favourite" (cough) issue with Calibre again I'm afraid. It catches many new users out. Calibre has different toolbars for when a device is connected versus when it is not. Go to Preferences -> Toolbars and make sure you also add the plugin to the toolbar for "The main toolbar when a device is connected".

Just updated Calibre and applied your settings, it finally worked (it only worked after upgrading Calibre)!
Thanks a mil

GoghGirl · 11-28-2011, 08:29 PM

Hello! I just installed the plugin!
Its great! I had stopped using goodreads before since i simply got bored of updating the info in both locations..

I encountered one issue which is caused by how I organize my library, specifically my series..
To show you how I organize: Lets take the Night Huntress series by Jeaniene Frost.
I like having all the books in a series listed by alphabetical order(since alot of times the series tag doesnt even show up on my reader) so I changed the name of all the titles in my library to follow a certain pattern.
The titles of the above series in my calibre show up as:
NH1 Halfway to the Grave
NH2 One foot in the Grave
NH3 ...
NH4...
etc..
All of the books in my library have 2-4 letters to denote the name of the series then followed by the # of the book.

I noticed when I try to link the books to Goodreads it does not offer any suggestions to what the book is. In order to find it I have to click "search Goodreads.com".. After clicking Goodreads always suggests the book Im looking for is names "hello"(I found this rather bizarre because most of the books didnt even have H anywhere in the title..) This takes up quite a bit of time since it takes me to the browser and I have to copy and paste the link..

If I take the NH1 out of the title it has it listed as soon as I click to link up.

Is there any way for it to omit the NH# when it searches? Or any other way to do it that would be faster? Manually deleting the beginning of all the titles would take forever as well..
I have alot of books to link..

10-31-2011, 03:15 PM	#279
Domdom Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2011 Device: Kindle 4	Bug? Howdy! Just installed this interesting plugin. Something seems wrong, it displays correctly in the toolbar but quickly (after first action), simply disappear and features are not accessible! Using latest versions of all programs. Plugin is authenticated with goodreads site ... Any idea? --- update: as soon as I disconnect my Kindle, toolbar buttons are back ... weird ... shouldnt they stay there even with Kindle connected? maybe a Calibre issue .... Last edited by Domdom; 10-31-2011 at 03:18 PM.

11-08-2011, 04:13 PM	#283
ElMiko Addict Posts: 320 Karma: 56788 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: Kindle	The Goodreads site is down (at least on the east coast of the US), which may be why the plugin is having trouble communicating with it. Try going to goodreads directly and see if the site is up. EDIT: Give it another whirl. Goodreads is back up again. Last edited by ElMiko; 11-08-2011 at 06:50 PM.

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10-01-2011, 02:13 PM	#273
ElMiko Addict Posts: 320 Karma: 56788 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: Kindle	Ugh, I apologize for asking questions already answered. I did read the first ten pages or so of the thread before figuring that if it hadn't been asked by then, I was in the clear. That'll learn me. As if that weren't enough, your response was embarrassingly thorough. It's clear that your vision (or, I guess I should say "the collective vision") for this plugin is quite broad. To be clear, Goodreads Sync already offers far more functionality than having no Goodreads Sync would! As with all your work, I look forward to what the future will bring.

10-01-2011, 02:33 PM	#274
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,635 Karma: 2162064 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	@ElMiko - no apologies needed at all. I don't expect every user to read through 19 pages of a thread in detail . Your post was good in that it prompted me to attempt to summarise the "todo" list of requests, so I can point people to it for further debate until I actually get around to hopefully implementing some of it.

10-02-2011, 07:54 PM	#275
CWatkinsNash IOC Chief Archivist Posts: 3,950 Karma: 53868218 Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Fruitland Park, FL, USA Device: Meebook M7, Paperwhite 2021, Fire HD 8+, Fire HD 10+, Lenovo Tab P12	I'm baaaack! :-) Kiwidude, you may recall that I started the use this plugin previously but it just wasn't working for how I was doing things. There have been many changes since then, not only to the plugin but also to the way I do things. So I came here to ask what might have been a silly question, but then I thought, why don't I just try it and see. Sooo... guess who is the newest, most fervent user of the plugin!! Always happens this way, don't it? Except this time I don't have a list of requests, because it's doing exactly what I want it to do. I guess my only question is this - is there any change regarding the extent of the API call limitations? And related to that - I'm not sure how the API calls work for GR. What constitutes a single "hit"? For example, if I link 10 books, then add those same 10 books to the to-read shelf, then also "upload tags as shelves", is that 20 calls? 21? 30? Forgive me if that's been covered already, but there are 274 comments in this thread and my skimming missed a lot. Thanks! Christa

10-03-2011, 05:54 AM	#276
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,635 Karma: 2162064 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	Ahhh, the lovely CWatkinsNash returns, welcome back... I do recall your previous post, in fact I read it again yesterday as part of building the list of requests I posted above. It would seem that you have indeed changed your workflow, because the plugin hasn't changed very much since then... AFAIK Goodreads haven't changed their T&C, not that I have looked recently. However since I have not once had any email indication of users misbehaving with the plugin in it's current guise, and the number of plugin users is extremely low in comparison to the number of calibre users I'm feeling more willing to open the floodgates a little with it to make the plugin more user friendly. In terms of exactly how many calls are being done for the various scenarios you mention, I couldn't tell you without trawling through the code. Off the top of my head, linking a book is one call per book. When you add a book to a shelf and bring up that dialog, there will be one call per 200 books already on that shelf just to validate the books you are adding are not already on there. Then there will be one call per book to actually add the book to a shelf. For the upload tags as shelves functionality, there will be one call per tag (shelf) per book. So it all adds up pretty quickly.

10-23-2011, 08:00 AM	#278
booklover81 Member Posts: 10 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2011 Device: Nook Color	Ok.. Maybe I'm having a really blonde moment today but I can't seem to figure out how to Upload tags as shelves...I've done the tag mapping and the 'sync from shelf' editing ..still nothing...can someone help?

10-31-2011, 03:42 PM	#280
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,635 Karma: 2162064 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	@DomDom - It's my "favourite" (cough) issue with Calibre again I'm afraid. It catches many new users out. Calibre has different toolbars for when a device is connected versus when it is not. Go to Preferences -> Toolbars and make sure you also add the plugin to the toolbar for "The main toolbar when a device is connected". @booklover81 - my apologies, I somehow missed your post. Did you get your problem sorted?

11-08-2011, 02:34 PM	#282
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,635 Karma: 2162064 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	@Scorpionx - welcome to MobileRead. Did you get your problem sorted? Try running calibre in debug mode, and PM the contents to me if you are still having issues. I doubt there is much I can do about it though - it is most likely there was just some temporary issue with Goodreads (or a more permanent one with your Goodreads account).

11-28-2011, 08:29 PM	#285
GoghGirl Member Posts: 20 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2011 Device: Nook Color Rooted	Hello! I just installed the plugin! Its great! I had stopped using goodreads before since i simply got bored of updating the info in both locations.. I encountered one issue which is caused by how I organize my library, specifically my series.. To show you how I organize: Lets take the Night Huntress series by Jeaniene Frost. I like having all the books in a series listed by alphabetical order(since alot of times the series tag doesnt even show up on my reader) so I changed the name of all the titles in my library to follow a certain pattern. The titles of the above series in my calibre show up as: NH1 Halfway to the Grave NH2 One foot in the Grave NH3 ... NH4... etc.. All of the books in my library have 2-4 letters to denote the name of the series then followed by the # of the book. I noticed when I try to link the books to Goodreads it does not offer any suggestions to what the book is. In order to find it I have to click "search Goodreads.com".. After clicking Goodreads always suggests the book Im looking for is names "hello"(I found this rather bizarre because most of the books didnt even have H anywhere in the title..) This takes up quite a bit of time since it takes me to the browser and I have to copy and paste the link.. If I take the NH1 out of the title it has it listed as soon as I click to link up. Is there any way for it to omit the NH# when it searches? Or any other way to do it that would be faster? Manually deleting the beginning of all the titles would take forever as well.. I have alot of books to link..

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