Manually edit and rebuild .metadata.calibre file?

[natruok]

Hi!

I was wondering if it's possible to manually edit and rebuild the metadata.calibre file?

The latest updates to the Bookshelf KOReader plugin has a function to parse out the metadata.calibre file to pull columns and custom columns data, but my calibre library is huge (was 120+ columns, have brought it down to 85 now) since I'm cleaning through my library, and I also have certain columns where I have longer python scripts, etc.

Result is an extremely inflated metadata.calibre file, which includes all the custom columns, when I only want about 3-5 of the columns to be imported in for use with KOReader, and the app/plugin can only handle a metadata file up to 64mb — my full export is about 600mb currently.

I've tried converting the file type to see the information in there, and can also rebuild it to have only the column information that I actually need (assuming what I see in text in the file is everything) — but when I save it back to a "metadata.calibre" file, even though the contents appear the same (excluding all the extra unneeded custom columns) and the file type appears the same, it isn't the same file because the app can't read it anymore.

When scanning library via the calibre plugin, it also shows that it's found one library with 0 books.

Is there something else that needs to be done to allow this to work, or is this an impossible task?

[kovidgoyal]

easiest way would be to delete the books and resend.