parsing calibre metadata

[pazos]

I'm writing a SAX json parser for "metadata.calibre" files, intended for devices with not enough ram to decode the entire file at once.

I have a couple of those metadata files. In both of them the fields for each book in the array are 1) same fields and 2) in the same order.

local all_fields = {
"publisher",
"title_sort",
"author_sort",
"link_maps",
"identifiers",
"mobi-asin",
"cover",
"db_id",
"book_producer",
"pubdate",
"series",
"thumbnail",
"lpath",
"author_sort_map",
"application_id",
"series_index",
"authors",
"comments",
"rating",
"rights",
"publication_type",
"mime",
"languages",
"size",
"tags",
"timestamp",
"uuid",
"last_modified",
"user_categories",
"user_metadata",
"title",
}

Can I assume this holds true for every metadata file generated by calibre? Does the order might differ on some cases?

I wish this is true because I'm lazy as hell

[kovidgoyal]

You cant assume order will always be the same, sorry. You can assume that the fields wont change as they have been stable for a decade + though in principle new fields might be added in the future.

[pazos]

Good to know

Thanks for your time, Mr Goyal.