[GUI Plugin] Goodreads Sync

[sdow1]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

I haven't seen that one before. Must be something to do with one of the books on that shelf. Send me a PM with your Goodreads id (just copy the hyperlink for when you click on your name on the home page) so I can test with the contents of your shelf.

kiwidude:

just sent you a PM. Thanks for looking into this!

[kiwidude]

The problem sdow1 was having is another recurrence of a bug in Goodreads that I have had to "enhance" my workaround for. It is caused by a small minority of books having invalid data being sent through the Goodreads API. The next version of the plugin will now ignore these books so you can sync the rest of your shelf, and hopefully Goodreads will address the issue soon anyways.

The next version also has the implementation of retrieving tags from your shelves using a customisable mapping as requested by msr. I've restructured the menu a little to accommodate this. I can envisage other actions in future appearing on the linked book menu like creating reviews. See the screenshots for how this appears.

The other addition to the next version is changing where the goodreads linked id is stored to the new identifiers table Kovid has added to the next release. This is working really well and it is great to be able to have a custom column either displaying the id or a Y/N type flag if you want it to show which books you have linked.

If anyone is willing to test the next version for me you will need to be running from source code to get Kovid's changes until the next Calibre release. Drop me a PM if you want to give it a go, or else wait a few days for an official release.

[Doug-W]

Went to link a book this morning and got:
calibre, version 0.7.48
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>TypeError</b>:arguments did not match any overloaded call:
QLineEdit(QWidget parent=None): too many arguments
QLineEdit(QString, QWidget parent=None): argument 1 has unexpected type 'NoneType'

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\dwarren\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\ Goodreads Sync.zip\goodreads_sync_code.py", line 2627, in search_goodreads_to_link_book
File "C:\Users\dwarren\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\ Goodreads Sync.zip\goodreads_sync_code.py", line 2665, in search_to_link_books
File "C:\Users\dwarren\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\ Goodreads Sync.zip\goodreads_sync_code.py", line 492, in __init__
File "C:\Users\dwarren\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\ Goodreads Sync.zip\goodreads_sync_code.py", line 174, in __init__
TypeError: arguments did not match any overloaded call:
QLineEdit(QWidget parent=None): too many arguments
QLineEdit(QString, QWidget parent=None): argument 1 has unexpected type 'NoneType'

This is based off the version you E-mailed me last week, and 0.7.48

[kiwidude]

You are using an "old" preview of the next release. Now you are on 0.7.48 I will email you the latest version of it.

I don't want to make it publicly available as yet because there is one last thing I want to do with it. (Goodreads have said that as of tomorrow a new API method will be available which will allow when adding new shelves to specify more options than just a name.)

[sdow1]

Hey kiwidude:

I just synced from goodreads this morning since I had added a few new books to my wishlist, and the problem book that we had decided to skip suddenly started sync-ing. I can only assume this is because goodreads fixed something on their end, given that I haven't updated the plugin since our last discussion. Perhaps it has something to do with the updated API they were promising?

[kiwidude]

Yes that is exactly right, I was going to drop you a note about that. Goodreads did a website software update yesterday and I tested it very late last night to find certainly for that particular book the issue is resolved (and hopefully for any others that had the same problem as well).

I am very close to releasing the next version of this plugin, I just have a couple of people testing it at the moment and waiting to hear if they have any issues with it.

[kiwidude]

Download from the first post on this thread - note that this requires at least the latest version of Calibre of v0.7.48. To the few of you who I sent test versions, please ensure you grab this official release version.

New features:

• Ability to map shelves your book is on to a tag in Goodreads. Read the previous posts on this thread for more details and screenshots.
• Goodreads ids are now stored in the new identifiers table. This makes them both searchable and able to be displayed as a column. See the first post in the thread for instructions.
• Limit removed on number of Goodreads shelves (previous limit was 100)
• Ability to create new shelves from the configuration dialog, with full options of featured, exclusive and sortable.
• Ability to navigate to the Goodreads shelves edit page direct from the configuration dialog via shelves context menu

Bug fixes:

• Error when no Goodreads book selected in link dialog and ok clicked
• Error when linking to a Calibre book with no ISBN
• Deleting a linked book would show as Goodreads still having a link until restart
• Ensure no trailing whitespace in title when adding empty books

[msr]

I really like the display column for whether a book is linked or not.

Getting an out-of-index error (see below) when I try to download tags. Not sure where the error is likely to be (other than due to my plethora of shelves). Tried a couple of different linked books and get the same error each time.

calibre, version 0.7.48
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>IndexError</b>:list index out of range

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\Mike\AppData\Roaming\calibre\plugins\Goodreads Sync.zip\goodreads_sync_code.py", line 3319, in download_tags
  File "site-packages\calibre\library\database2.py", line 200, in get_property
  File "site-packages\calibre\library\caches.py", line 211, in __getitem__
IndexError: list index out of range

[kranu]

Cool, thanks! I'm new to this extension, and it took me a while to figure out that I had to add the toolbar button. Once I got that, the whole thing was a breeze. I especially like how you use the API instead of just storing the username/password (vulnerable) and "scraping" off the website.

Since I have ~50 books in my Calibre library, it took a while to link every book. It's not a big deal though, since I only have to do it once. However, if you want to fix the problem, I suggest that you instead have one main window that lists all the books that I selected. Books that yield one result are auto-selected, so that people will only have to fine-tune their books that have many different search results. (If that makes any sense )

[kiwidude]

Sorry folks, something was broken in yesterdays release as reported by msr above for downloading tags. New version attached to the first post.

[kiwidude]

Originally Posted by kranu

Since I have ~50 books in my Calibre library, it took a while to link every book. It's not a big deal though, since I only have to do it once. However, if you want to fix the problem, I suggest that you instead have one main window that lists all the books that I selected. Books that yield one result are auto-selected, so that people will only have to fine-tune their books that have many different search results. (If that makes any sense )

I understand, and it was something I contemplated doing. However the purpose behind linking books (should) be for adding them to a shelf in Goodreads. Had you just selected the books and chosen "Add to shelf", in that dialog you would have been presented with the list of books, any that had ISBN would have automatically been linked and you could fine tune etc.

[kranu]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

I understand, and it was something I contemplated doing. However the purpose behind linking books (should) be for adding them to a shelf in Goodreads. Had you just selected the books and chosen "Add to shelf", in that dialog you would have been presented with the list of books, any that had ISBN would have automatically been linked and you could fine tune etc.

Oh ok. I didn't know that. I linked each of my books first. Then I added them to GoodReads.

[Huisie]

Jut wanted to add a quick thank-you.

I'm some way from being organised enough to use this plug-in, but your other two are wicked useful.

When I first started reading the description, I was afraid it wouldn't be able to handle a high volume - glad to see there is a CSV option.

Looking forward to getting stuck into this.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Huisie

When I first started reading the description, I was afraid it wouldn't be able to handle a high volume - glad to see there is a CSV option.

This plugin doesn't use CSV, that is a feature of the catalog generation (drop down arrow to the right of the Convert books icon). Kiwidude includes info/warning about bulk operations on the help page for the plugin.

Important Note About Bulk Operations

Goodreads have Terms & Conditions associated with their API that this plugin is dependent upon. The T&C place a very strict limit on the throughput of calls being made. The more successful this plugin is and the more users that perform actions like adding to shelves etc, the greater the risk of the plugin being banned.

If you ignore this warning the plugin will stop working for everyone (including you) and there is no workaround.

To discourage users from bulk operations using the plugin there is a limit of 50 selected rows for the actions of add to shelves/remove from shelves. If you have more books you wish to add in bulk to the Goodreads website, export them from Calibre as a CSV catalog and upload to the Goodreads website. For more details see http://www.goodreads.com/review/import

[Huisie]

@dwanthny

Thank you for the clarification...

Not to worry, that is what I was referring to...