Cli-usage in plugins

[drMerry]

I would like to use the command line interface of calibre in one of my plugins.
Is there a posibility to do so?

The idea is to create a plugin that can perform multiple-database actions (like syncing of some data).

Edit:
In the manual I found information about the cli and about plugin creation, but not about howto execute cli-tasks via plugins.

[user_none]

I see absolutely no point in what you're asking. A plugin has full access to the API and can call the required functionality programatically. What exactly do you want to do with the db calls?

[drMerry]

Hmm, so all functions in the cli are available by the API.
I'll look at it.

What I'm planning to do is e.g. requesting columns from the current database and from a remote database.
So I can display them and show the differences with the option to sync (saying update data in one of the databases or add column in remote database.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by drMerry

What I'm planning to do is e.g. requesting columns from the current database and from a remote database.
So I can display them and show the differences with the option to sync (saying update data in one of the databases or add column in remote database.

That will require you to have two libraries open at the same time, or at least to switch libraries in the middle of processing. I don't see any way to do that using calibre's API without a world of hurt.

You would probably be better off writing your own query programs that produce output in some known format such as CSV. You would use python's os.system() API to execute the query on the read-only library, and calibre's API to get the info for the read/write library. Or something like that.

[drMerry]

hmmmm...

I was thinking of using the cli.
the cli interface has some options to set and get information from the database.
So I would use calibre for the current db and get / set (some) info of the other database using calibre-cli

[kovidgoyal]

There is no need to use the cli, just create a new LibraryDatabse2 object to connect to the other library. See for example the code in actions.copy_to_library

[drMerry]

of course I could wirte another app, but the nice thing is to have it integrated in calibre.

If I want my own app to be integrated in calibre, I can see 3 ways:
1. Starting my app by calibre using a cli-command
2. Starting my app by user before or during calibre
3. Run my app seperately from calibre

Oprion 2 and 3 are not user friendly. Option 1 will need the same function as requested in first post

[drMerry]

Typing together

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

There is no need to use the cli, just create a new LibraryDatabse2 object to connect to the other library. See for example the code in actions.copy_to_library

hmmm sounds promising.

I'll take a look, thanks.

[chaley]

Note that some parts of calibre assume that there is one library open. Two I can think of are user-define template functions and saved searches. There are probably others.