Defining Metadata with "calibredb add" command line function.

[macr0t0r]

Okay, I'm back with more command-line stuff. It's high time I dump my entire library in Calibre.

However, some files have done a poor job of labeling metadata. Sometimes it's by directory name, and sometimes it's in the file itself (yah, it's a mess...that's why I'm putting it in Calibre). My problem is that the "calibredb add" function doesn't appear to support defining metadata (--author "John Smith" --Title "Horribly Formatted Book"). There is the "set_metadata" function, but that requires the Database ID, and the calibredb add function does not return that value. I can't be sure how successful the import was, so I can't really automate what title to search for with the "list" command in order to get the database ID.

I want to add a book, get the database id, and then use the id to set metadata and cover page. What is the best way to get the database id of the last added book?

- Jim

[kovidgoyal]

Here's a BASH command line to do that

calibredb list | tail -n2 | head -n1 | cut -f1 -d " "

calibredb list by default sorts on timestam which means the last entry will have the id of the last added book

[macr0t0r]

That'll work. Thanks!
- Jim

[Zatakawa]

Sorry for reviving this old thread, but your BASH command does not always work, Kovid. If a title or author is very long and needs to lines to be displayed, tail -n2 does not work anymore.

Fiddling around with "--line-width=LINE_WIDTH" also does not offer a solution because line width is never longer than the book with the longest title.

EDIT: One workaround is to use -f timestamp