calibredb add -- how to add additional metadata?

[TuxGirl]

I'm trying to figure out how to an empty ebook from the command-line while adding fields such as tags and comments. Is that possible? If not, is that something I can do somehow without having to write out opf files for each book that I'm doing it with?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by TuxGirl

I'm trying to figure out how to an empty ebook from the command-line while adding fields such as tags and comments. Is that possible? If not, is that something I can do somehow without having to write out opf files for each book that I'm doing it with?

calibredb add --help
lists what you can do
you can use multiple switches at the on the same commandline

[TuxGirl]

Originally Posted by theducks

calibredb add --help
lists what you can do
you can use multiple switches at the on the same commandline

I understand that. I don't see any way to add tags or comments to a book from the command-line anywhere. I guess the issue is that I'm hoping that I'm missing some way to do this from the command-line.

I'm trying to write a script that can import all my kindle books into the calibre db as empty books. Perhaps writing this as a plugin would work better, but I have no python experience, so I'm working on this in a ruby script.

[kovidgoyal]

There's no way to do it if you aren't willing to work with OPF files.

[Terisa de morgan]

Not with calibre-add, but in some cases you can use edit-meta before, and there you can add tags and comments.

[TuxGirl]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

There's no way to do it if you aren't willing to work with OPF files.

Okay... I guess I'll have to look into OPF files, or maybe determine whether porting to a plugin will give me what I want...

Thanks!
~Erin

[kovidgoyal]

Its not that hard, OPF is just a simple XML file. Use

calibredb show_metadata --as-opf

to generate the OPF file, then edit it, and use set_metadata

[TuxGirl]

will do that.

this should be an interesting process... Trying to add around 1500 books programmatically.

[Terisa de morgan]

The problem is not adding them (I usually add books in batch from command line, never UI), but getting the right metadata into them

[TuxGirl]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

The problem is not adding them (I usually add books in batch from command line, never UI), but getting the right metadata into them

I'm writing a script that yanks all the metadata from amazon while adding the books. It's not pretty, but it should work...

I'm grabbing the categorization that Amazon lists for tags, and sticking the item description in the comments field. Hopefully that should handle most of the hard work of adding the books.

[Terisa de morgan]

If you're doing that, you can have two steps: the first one updates metadata (edit-meta) and the second one adds the book (calibre-add). I'm doing it in that way and it works.

[TuxGirl]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

If you're doing that, you can have two steps: the first one updates metadata (edit-meta) and the second one adds the book (calibre-add). I'm doing it in that way and it works.

Hmmm... I've got it adding the empty book, and then adding the metadata to the book. It's working so far in a couple of tests.. Once I've run it without needing any edits, I'll post it here in case anyone wants to mess with it.

It's not super user-friendly, and requires ruby and some rubygems libraries, along with an amazon AWS account, but it does appear to work so far...

[TuxGirl]

Okay... It's imported around 120 books so far, with no errors, so here it is... (you will have to pull the .txt off the end of the file)

I'm not responsible if this causes problems, so make sure you back up your existing library before using it. If you hit an error, I may or may not be able to fix it. It's currently set up for use on a mac. If you have a PC, you may have to change settings like the location of ruby. Either way, you need to make an amazon config file (on mac or linux, it's ~/.amazonrc) with your AWS account info, install ruby, install rubygems, and then install the fastercsv and ruby-aaws gems. You will also want to add a metadata field called "ASIN" to your calibre setup. From there, it can take a tab-delimited csv file (with headers) that has at least 'Binding' and 'ASIN'. I use the shelfari export csv, with no modifications to it.

If you want different functionality, I probably won't be willing to modify it myself, but you'll have the code, so you can either modify it yourself, or find someone to modify it for you.

It's an ugly script, and not commented... I know that. I probably won't be making many/any improvements to it, since it's doing what I need it for...

I guess the summary of the above is "I'm throwing this script over the wall and if you want it, you can make it work for what you need, but I'm not going to be heavily supporting it. If you get a specific error, you can try asking in this thread, and if I know immediately what's causing it, I'll try to help, but I'm not going to put lots of effort into making it better right now, since I've got other things on my plate these days."

[TuxGirl]

oh... just a warning... the script is pretty chatty. i've been running it with the output piping to a file, but you could just pipe it to /dev/null (although if you then have problems, it'll be hard to find the source unless you re-run it with the output going to a file or to stdout.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by TuxGirl

Hmmm... I've got it adding the empty book, and then adding the metadata to the book. It's working so far in a couple of tests.. Once I've run it without needing any edits, I'll post it here in case anyone wants to mess with it.

It's not super user-friendly, and requires ruby and some rubygems libraries, along with an amazon AWS account, but it does appear to work so far...

Yes, please, I'm more "plain", I add metadata and later the book with a bat file, but I give the params, I don't get them from internet.