Knowing the last serie index number

[myki]

Greetings,

To improve my "save as" template, i need to know the last number of the serie where the book is part of.

Is it possible ??

It would be perfect if i would't need to create a custom column for that (or a dynamic one to avoid the problem of adding a book in the serie).

Thanx for your help

[chaley]

Originally Posted by myki

Greetings,

To improve my "save as" template, i need to know the last number of the serie where the book is part of.

Is it possible ??

It would be perfect if i would't need to create a custom column for that (or a dynamic one to avoid the problem of adding a book in the serie).

Thanx for your help

No, it isn't possible. The metadata for a book includes only the metadata for that book. There is no way for a template to access library-wide information.

[myki]

Thanx for your answer chaley. When i will have more time to spend on this, i will try by using ebook-meta.exe in a batch file.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by myki

Thanx for your answer chaley. When i will have more time to spend on this, i will try by using ebook-meta.exe in a batch file.

The Quality Check PI has a 'Find Series gap' tool

[chaley]

Originally Posted by myki

Thanx for your answer chaley. When i will have more time to spend on this, i will try by using ebook-meta.exe in a batch file.

Even better would be a plugin. They have access to the database and can update book metadata. Of course, doing a plugin has a fairly high start-up cost, to learn python, to learn calibre's API, and to learn the plugin architecture. But in the end you would have a solution where you push one button in calibre and all the books are updated.

Another solution that is easier than a plugin is to write a python script that uses calibre's API. Here is an example that does what you want (I think)

def init_cache(library_path):
	from calibre.db.backend import DB
	from calibre.db.cache import Cache
	backend = DB(library_path)
	cache = Cache(backend)
	cache.init()
	return cache

from collections import defaultdict
	
cache = init_cache(library_path = sys.argv[1])

series_info = {}

for id_ in cache.all_book_ids():
	series = cache.field_for('series', id_)
	if series:
		sidx = cache.field_for('series_index', id_)
		if series in series_info:
			sidx = max(sidx, series_info[series]['max_index'])
			series_info[series]['max_index'] = sidx
		else:
			series_info[series] = {'max_index':sidx, 'ids':set()}
		series_info[series]['ids'].add(id_)
		
for series in series_info.iterkeys():
	sidx = series_info[series]['max_index']
	dct = {book_id:sidx for book_id in series_info[series]['ids']}
	cache.set_field('#myfloat', dct)
	print(series, sidx)

You would need to change the lookup name where you want to store the maximum series number.

You call the script with something like

d:\CBH_Data\calibre.git>calibre-debug -e tests\highest_number_is_series.py Library.test_small

where "tests\highest_number_is_series.py" is the file containing the above script and the last parameter is the path to the folder containing the library.

[myki]

Very interesting !

If I understand correctly, #myfloat is a personnal column : "floating point number", where my max serie number will be automatically stored by your Python script ?
And what the "Library.test_small" parameter means ?

Thanks for your rich help chaley.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by myki

Very interesting !

If I understand correctly, #myfloat is a personnal column : "floating point number", where my max serie number will be automatically stored by your Python script ?
And what the "Library.test_small" parameter means ?

Thanks for your rich help chaley.

You understand #myfloat correctly. It is the lookup name for a custom float column that will be set to the highest series index for a particular series.

The "Library.test_small" parameter is the name of the folder containing calibre's library. In my case I ran the script in a command box that has as its current working folder the parent of my library. You could also run it with a full path such as "C:\My Important Stuff\Books\Libraries\Calibre Library". You could just as easily hard-code the path into the script if you have only one calibre library.

[myki]

Hello Chaley, i hope you'll still give an eye to this post...

I built a test library before continuing, then i tried your python script...
And magic ! It works !
Now i would like to be able to do my own little personnal fields, based on your script but i need to learn python a bit, and how to interact with Calibre.
I don't want to bother you with full of newbie questions, so...

Can someone please tell me where to find some documentations, about python oriented Calibre ?
Thanks in advance

[chaley]

@myki: the only documentation of calibre apis is the comments in the source, and even those won't help much. So just ask. For most things the needed api is small.

However, if you are thinking of a plugin then the best place to start is calibre's sample on the development section of its web site, then look at other plugins to see how the solve problems.

[myki]

ok thank you chaley, i will look at comments...
but i comfess that it seems very difficult to me !
So... I will ask you and the community my needs :

1) I want to feed a personnal field with the number of books of the serie it is part of.
2) And a true/false one which would be true if a same serie number is found in its serie.

3) And finally, is it possible to execute a python script on selected books only ?
If Calibre has to be off to execute a script, maybe the script should be executed for my books with my flag "treated" at false (or playing with the date but... in a next step ).

Thanx for your patience...

[chaley]

Originally Posted by myki

ok thank you chaley, i will look at comments...
but i comfess that it seems very difficult to me !
So... I will ask you and the community my needs :

1) I want to feed a personnal field with the number of books of the serie it is part of.

Add a second field assignment, probably like this:

for series in series_info.iterkeys():
	sidx = series_info[series]['max_index']
	book_ids = series_info[series]['ids']
	dct = {book_id:sidx for book_id in book_ids}
	cache.set_field('#myfloat', dct)
	dct = {book_id:len(book_ids) for book_id in book_ids}
	cache.set_field('#mycount', dct)
	print(series, sidx)

2) And a true/false one which would be true if a same serie number is found in its serie.

I assume you mean a duplicate series number? I think that the series plugin can find these.

However, you can do this as well. You would create a dictionary of the book ids for each series index for each series. The code would look something like

for id_ in cache.all_book_ids():
	series = cache.field_for('series', id_)
	if series:
		sidx = cache.field_for('series_index', id_)
		if series in series_info:
			sidx = max(sidx, series_info[series]['max_index'])
			series_info[series]['max_index'] = sidx
			if sidx not in series_info[series]['indices']:
				series_info[series]['indices'] = {sidx:set()}
		else:
			series_info[series] = {'max_index':sidx, 'ids':set(), 'indices': {sidx: set()}
		series_info[series]['ids'].add(id_)
		series_info[series]['indices'][sidx].add(id_)

Next you would iterate through the series_info[series]['indices'] dictionary looking for sidx values with more than one element (book id) in the set, then do what you want with that value.

3) And finally, is it possible to execute a python script on selected books only ?
If Calibre has to be off to execute a script, maybe the script should be executed for my books with my flag "treated" at false (or playing with the date but... in a next step ).

Calibre definitely must not be running when you execute a script.

You can do a search in a script with the API call

book_ids = cache.search('#fieldname:"=' + value_to_search_for + '"')

The parameter is an arbitrary calibre search expression, including "and" and "or" if you need them. It returns a list of book ids matching that expression. You would then use that list as needed.

You must be careful where you use the search results. For example, if you use the results to compute the series info for books then you will get the wrong answer if the search doesn't find all the books in the series. It might be better to use the search results to decide which books to update, not which books to consider when computing the data.