Fetching news DELIVERED as PDF

Chillhelm · 11-14-2012, 01:05 PM

Hello everyone,

this my first post here, so please be gentle. Also I should state that I of course searched the forums and google first, but for my particular problem the search results were not helpful.

The situation is this: Im subscribed to a news feed (rss-feed) that delivers its articles (homework assignments from my university) as pdf files.
Currently I use a little self-written script (in the Microsoft PowerShell language, but I could rewrite it to python, if that helps at all) to automatically check for new assignments, download them and (if avaiable) copy them to my eBook reader.
However, I'd like for Calibre to do that for me. I tried setting up a newsfeed but that parses all the articles as if they were HTML.
My question then has 3 parts.
a) Is it possible to have calibre fetch those PDFs for me each week, like it does with any regular newsfeed?
b) If so, is a heavily rewritten recipe the way to do it? (Ie overwriting the preexisting download functions etc...)
c) Is there maybe someone out there who already has done this work for me and is willing to share?

And while Im busy with wishful thinking: Can Calibre merge PDFs? (So that all my homework assignments could be stored in one file instead of 10 files for 10 weeks)

kovidgoyal · 11-17-2012, 10:44 PM

You can do it by hacking the recipe system to downlaod the pdf and autoadd it to the db using calibredb. I believe it's been done before, but you'll have to do some googling to find it.

As for merging, calibre wont do it out of the box but it should be trivial to make a user interface plugin that does it either using pdftk or the podofo module that calibre ships with.

11-14-2012, 01:05 PM	#1
Chillhelm Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Nov 2012 Device: Kobo Touch	Fetching news DELIVERED as PDF Hello everyone, this my first post here, so please be gentle. Also I should state that I of course searched the forums and google first, but for my particular problem the search results were not helpful. The situation is this: Im subscribed to a news feed (rss-feed) that delivers its articles (homework assignments from my university) as pdf files. Currently I use a little self-written script (in the Microsoft PowerShell language, but I could rewrite it to python, if that helps at all) to automatically check for new assignments, download them and (if avaiable) copy them to my eBook reader. However, I'd like for Calibre to do that for me. I tried setting up a newsfeed but that parses all the articles as if they were HTML. My question then has 3 parts. a) Is it possible to have calibre fetch those PDFs for me each week, like it does with any regular newsfeed? b) If so, is a heavily rewritten recipe the way to do it? (Ie overwriting the preexisting download functions etc...) c) Is there maybe someone out there who already has done this work for me and is willing to share? And while Im busy with wishful thinking: Can Calibre merge PDFs? (So that all my homework assignments could be stored in one file instead of 10 files for 10 weeks)

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11-17-2012, 10:44 PM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 31,106 Karma: 7757719 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	You can do it by hacking the recipe system to downlaod the pdf and autoadd it to the db using calibredb. I believe it's been done before, but you'll have to do some googling to find it. As for merging, calibre wont do it out of the box but it should be trivial to make a user interface plugin that does it either using pdftk or the podofo module that calibre ships with.

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