Script to Generate Stanza Online Catalog for your Iphone/Touch

[RoninTech]

OK, Just tried it on my ipod Touch in Stanza. Getting there slowly but surely as I can now browse the feed. Some issues are that I can't see either of the images, the summary field doesn't wrap on the screen due to the <pre> tag and stanza can't access the books epub file. I looked at the xml being served and here's an example:

 <entry>
    <title>The Time Machine</title>
    <id>urn:calibre:8</id>
    <author><name>H G Wells</name></author>
    <updated>2008-10-12T23:40:34+00:00</updated>
    <link type="application/epub+zip" href="http://localhost:8080/get/epub/8"/>
    <link rel="x-stanza-cover-image" type="image/jpeg" href="http://localhost:8080/get/cover/8"/>
    <link rel="x-stanza-cover-image-thumbnail" type="image/jpeg" href="http://localhost:8080/get/thumb/8"/>
    <content type="xhtml">
      <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><pre>SUMMARY:
H. G. Wells’s sobering, thought-provoking novel is one of the greatest works of science fiction ever created—and as powerful today as when it was written. After inventing a machine that moves through time, the Traveler leaves Victorian London and goes far, far into the future.</pre></div>
    </content>

I wonder whether stanza can't handle this type of indirect image and epub link vs. links to the actual .jpeg and .epub files? I had some comments on the content formatting here:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...3&postcount=18

The stanza feed generated by calibredb list --output-format=stanza etc. works if I replace all the "http%3A"'s with "http:", add the missing thumbnail link and change the content formatting as mentioned above.

Cheers,
Crazy

[RoninTech]

Never mind I'm an idiot. Forgot to use the --hostname option to override localhost.

Now the only issue is the formatting of the content section and the stanza output of calibredb list.

Cheers,
Crazy

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Are you sure, I just tested the comment you posted below and it works fine for me. Try hitting refresh in your browser to make sure that it reloads the files.

Doh... yes your right. Must have just been cached.

BOb

[jakewalk]

OK, i can run the server via the calibre-server.exe and access the localhost XML-feed.

Crazy, you wrote you have overridden the localhost variable, but which server did you use? Your personal? I mean I could start with

calibre-server.exe --hostname http://www.google.com

But that wouldn't make much sense. You see I didn't quite understand how that server works.
Am I right that with 0.4.104 it still isn't possible to transfer the epub-file to my iPhone (without a personal server)? No need to hesitate, but I don't want to miss it when it works.

Regards,
jakewalk

[RoninTech]

Originally Posted by jakewalk

Am I right that with 0.4.104 it still isn't possible to transfer the epub-file to my iPhone (without a personal server)?

No, that would be wrong.

Calibre now has a built in web server. That's what lets you access it from localhost. The same process works when accessing from places other than localhost. You just have to tell calibre what the real hostname is of the web server and it works great except for the content formatting.

Cheers,
Crazy

[jakewalk]

Hi Crazy,

sorry to ask again, but I just don't get it: I have a webserver running through Calibre at the port 8080. But how can I access the Calibre server with my iPhone? What is the "real hostname"? Do I have to use the computer's IP? Could you please give me an example how you use the server?

Regards,
jakewalk

[RoninTech]

It is just the hostname of the machine you are running calibre on. If you don't have one or know how to find it ("hostname" command works on most windows boxes and linux distros) you should be able to use that machine's IP address. For example if your machine running calibre is called jakewalk you would run this from the command line:

calibre-server.exe --hostname jakewalk

Then on your iPod Touch or Iphone you go into Stanza's advanced settings page and set the feed url to be:

http://jakewalk:8080/stanza

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Crazy

[jakewalk]

Thanks Crazy, that clarified the configuration. Now I know that I probably have a problem with my network configuration. My PC and the iPhone were at the beginning connected with DHCP activated, but that didn't work with the stanza server. So I assigned static IP addresses. Now it basically works but not completely.

• I can ping my PC's IP-address from the iphone, but have ~65% loss of packets.
• When I open http://$MYPCIPADDRESS:8080 with Safari (iPhone) it opens the page after some loading time. When I try to access the feed with Stanza the request times out.
• I cannot ping my iPhone from the PC (I reinstalled OpenSSH on my iPhone and now I can ping my iPhone, but that didn't change much with my problem. I still have the packetlosses.)

Though that's not specifically a Calibre problem maybe someone has an idea?

Regards,
jakewalk

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by CrazyIvan

OK, Just tried it on my ipod Touch in Stanza. Getting there slowly but surely as I can now browse the feed. Some issues are that I can't see either of the images, the summary field doesn't wrap on the screen due to the <pre> tag and stanza can't access the books epub file. I looked at the xml being served and here's an example:

 <entry>
    <title>The Time Machine</title>
    <id>urn:calibre:8</id>
    <author><name>H G Wells</name></author>
    <updated>2008-10-12T23:40:34+00:00</updated>
    <link type="application/epub+zip" href="http://localhost:8080/get/epub/8"/>
    <link rel="x-stanza-cover-image" type="image/jpeg" href="http://localhost:8080/get/cover/8"/>
    <link rel="x-stanza-cover-image-thumbnail" type="image/jpeg" href="http://localhost:8080/get/thumb/8"/>
    <content type="xhtml">
      <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><pre>SUMMARY:
H. G. Wells’s sobering, thought-provoking novel is one of the greatest works of science fiction ever created—and as powerful today as when it was written. After inventing a machine that moves through time, the Traveler leaves Victorian London and goes far, far into the future.</pre></div>
    </content>

I wonder whether stanza can't handle this type of indirect image and epub link vs. links to the actual .jpeg and .epub files? I had some comments on the content formatting here:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...3&postcount=18

The stanza feed generated by calibredb list --output-format=stanza etc. works if I replace all the "http%3A"'s with "http:", add the missing thumbnail link and change the content formatting as mentioned above.

Cheers,
Crazy

The <pre> tags have been removed and http%3A has also been fixed.

[RoninTech]

Hey Jakewalk,

It just dawned on me where I'd heard your name before. So your jakewalk of pdaconverter fame! Man I still use that program to make ztxt's for my clie! Just wanted to to thank you for that great prog!

Gotta hate those intermittent network issues. On some of the wireless AP's they have memory leaks and slowly start flaking out over time. A reboot normally fixes it. You could try that. I've found that the community built router images often are more dependable than the commercial ones. For instance I'm using the tomato firmware on my Linksys AP.

Kovid, thanks for chucking the pre tags. Any chance we could get a align="center" added to the content div?

Cheers,
Crazy

[kovidgoyal]

do you need align="center" or will style="text-align:center" work?

[RoninTech]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

do you need align="center" or will style="text-align:center" work?

I'll try the style one out tonight and get back to you. I'll grab some screenshots as well just so you can see what your hard work has enabled.

Cheers,
Crazy

[RoninTech]

Ok,

Here's the results:

• Photo1 is with the existing <pre> formatting.
• Photo 2 is just 1 with the <pre> removed.
• Photo 3 is 2 with style="text-align:center", so that looks to work Kovid.
• Photo 4 is 3 with some extra fields that aren't currently added.

Do you think the extra fields are do-able from within Calibre? Not sure how they could be configured?

So here's the XML for photo4's formatting:

 <content type="xhtml">
              <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" style="text-align:center">TAGS: science fiction, classics<br />RATING: 5/5<br />SUMMARY:
H. G. Wellsâs sobering, thought-provoking novel is one of the greatest works of science fiction ever createdâand as powerful today as when it was written. After inventing a machine that moves through time, the Traveler leaves Victorian London and goes far, far into the future.</div>
      </content>

Cheers,
Crazy

P.S. The black marks in the images obscures the URL of my server

[kovidgoyal]

Adding the extra fields at the beginning of the comments section is easy enough, can you check if the ★ character &amp;#9733; displays correctly in stanza?

[RoninTech]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Adding the extra fields at the beginning of the comments section is easy enough, can you check if the ★ character &amp;#9733; displays correctly in stanza?

Yep, I pasted the following in the RATING field and you can see the resulting output in the screenshot:

★/&amp;#9733;<br />

Cheers,
Crazy