Library Management: various questions not worth their own thread

[shinykari]

Is there a way to pull a "Name" formatted column into a Column, Built from Other Columns (Behaves like tags)?

My #koboshelves composite column template is

{#fandom},{#characters},{#pairing}

It pulls in the #fandom and #pairing data, but the #characters data, which is in a column that's formatted as "Ampersand formatted text, show in tags browser" and as "Names," doesn't populate.

Right now I created a work around by using Action Chains to manually copy the info from the #characters column into a new plain "Comma separated text" column and pulling THAT into the #koboshelves column, but I'd like to remove that extra step if possible.

ETA: And another question! Is there an easy way (preferably using mass edit/search & replace) to take information from the #pairing column (formatted as Character A/Character B) and copy that into a #characters column as Character A & Character B?

[chaley]

Originally Posted by shinykari

Is there a way to pull a "Name" formatted column into a Column, Built from Other Columns (Behaves like tags)?

My #koboshelves composite column template is



It pulls in the #fandom and #pairing data, but the #characters data, which is in a column that's formatted as "Ampersand formatted text, show in tags browser" and as "Names," doesn't populate.

It works fine for me.

Here is my column definition for the column like your #characters.


Here is the template for my composite column


Here is the result, shown in the book list.


Do note that there can be problems copying data from a 'contains names' column (& separated) to a 'like tags' column (comma separated). If a name contains a comma than it is considered 2 tags. If this is possible then you should use re() to convert the commas into something else, perhaps a semicolon.

Also note that the tags in "like tags" composites are sorted. The order won't be the implied order in the template.

Right now I created a work around by using Action Chains to manually copy the info from the #characters column into a new plain "Comma separated text" column and pulling THAT into the #koboshelves column, but I'd like to remove that extra step if possible.

ETA: And another question! Is there an easy way (preferably using mass edit/search & replace) to take information from the #pairing column (formatted as Character A/Character B) and copy that into a #characters column as Character A & Character B?

Yes, using search & replace in regexp mode. Something like this:


Here is the booklist before running the S&R


And after running the S&R

[shinykari]

Originally Posted by chaley

Do note that there can be problems copying data from a 'contains names' column (& separated) to a 'like tags' column (comma separated). If a name contains a comma than it is considered 2 tags. If this is possible then you should use re() to convert the commas into something else, perhaps a semicolon.

Also note that the tags in "like tags" composites are sorted. The order won't be the implied order in the template.

Ah, yes, that may be the problem. The destination column is a "like tags" column. I will play with it and see if replacing "&" with another type of punctuation will allow it to work as intended. Sort order doesn't matter here.

Originally Posted by chaley

Yes, using search & replace in regexp mode. Something like this:

Thank you! I will give this a try.

[shinykari]

@chaley This worked!!!

For those who are interested in doing something similar, here's the details:

For the Pairing to Characters conversion, I set up an Action Chain exactly as chaley said, so I could run it on the books currently in my library. (New books imported will automatically populate #characters based on that field in FanFicFare.) The #characters column is a Comma Separated Text, like tags, shown in Tag Browser, with the "Names" option checked.

For my #koboshelves column, I set up a custom column as a "Column built from other columns, behaves like tags" with the following template:

{#fandom},{#pairing},{#characters:re(&, \,)}

This does end up with a bit of clean up work to merge all the "Character (implied)" and "Character (past)" into "Character", but it's worth it!

[chaley]

Originally Posted by un_pogaz

EDIT: And as expected, the Regular search syntax is faster than the Template search. A little, but perceptible (that with I search for this version).

I strongly suspect that in this case a template search that uses a python template will be faster than the regular search, as long as there aren't any search terms other than the template search. The python template will be pre-compiled then run for each book at python speed instead of GPM speed.

[kjdavies]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

For this specific case, I have a column, #readdates, which stores multiple dates, and a composite column to sort them.

Is there a better way to store multiple dates? In a regular tag column, 'Aug 12 2023' sorts alphabetically.

If you make it a tag column (comma-separated values), format the dates 'YYYY.MM.DD', they will sort in order and can be rendered hierarchically. That is, if you look at the title's details it might render 2023.08.26, 2023.08.27, 2023.08.28, 2023.09.10, 2023.09.11, 2023.09.12... but in the tag browser, this entry would show up under

• 2023
  • 08
    • 26
    • 27
    • 28
  • 09
    • 10
    • 11
    • 12

I've used this format a few times in a library that tracks when a title went into the store, when it was last updated, when I bought it, when I last downloaded it. It's actually not treated as a date, it's just a specifically-formatted string.

If they are date fields, you can create a custom column with a template to convert the date to the format above. However, I found (in the version I tried this with) that did some unfortunate things to GUI performance. I instead made it a static string and then updated my scripts to populate both the date fields and the formatted date fields.

[Wiggo]

What a happy coincidence!

I just saw @chaley's post in the template language changes thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...&postcount=124 and thought of the problem I've been having for a few days.

How can I bulk add my #dateread entries to a comma separated tag like column in the format yyyy.mm.dd? Some books already have entries, some do not.

edit: I just saw it's something similar @kjdavies is talking about

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Wiggo

What a happy coincidence!

I just saw @chaley's post in the template language changes thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...&postcount=124 and thought of the problem I've been having for a few days.

How can I bulk add my #dateread entries to a comma separated tag like column in the format yyyy.mm.dd? Some books already have entries, some do not.

edit: I just saw it's something similar @kjdavies is talking about

If I understand you, you want to format the date in #dateread and add it to a custom tags-like column. Why is it tags-like? How many #dateread columns do you have in each book? What do you expect to happen if you change the value in #dateread?

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by chaley

If I understand you, you want to format the date in #dateread and add it to a custom tags-like column. Why is it tags-like? How many #dateread columns do you have in each book? What do you expect to happen if you change the value in #dateread?

I have a taglike column for dates myself. When I finish a book, I copy the #lastread to the tag-column with a template. (This is part of my mark-as-read action chain. It also increments #timesread and has me set a rating.)

This lets me store multiple read dates but with only two columns, a date and a taglike.

[Wiggo]

Originally Posted by chaley

If I understand you, you want to format the date in #dateread and add it to a custom tags-like column. Why is it tags-like? How many #dateread columns do you have in each book? What do you expect to happen if you change the value in #dateread?

I got the idea with the two columns from@obc (as described above).

But I want my "date-tags" hierarchical - yyyy.mm.dd
So e.g. a book has the #readdates 2016.12.01, 2023.09.17

But I can't manage to add the last dateread (instead of replace) and make it hierarchical

edit: @obc
how do you do incrementig the readcount, I'm also to stupid for?

[ownedbycats]

I think something like this in an Action Chains SFE should work - I'm not on source and can't test at the moment. Run it in the tester first.

program:
	list_union(strcat(format_date_field('#lastread', 'yyyy.MM.dd')), $#readdates, ',')

It's based on the template I use. lastread is your date column, and readdates is your tag column. Set readdates to hierarchical in settings.

[Wiggo]

Thanks for this code @obc - I wait for the Calibre update to test it.

I'm very interested in your mark-as-read action chain, would you attach it here, please?

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Wiggo

Thanks for this code @obc - I wait for the Calibre update to test it.

I'm very interested in your mark-as-read action chain, would you attach it here, please?

Here. Since a lot of the options overlap, I use Chain Variations to also have it serve as a 'Mark as DNF' chain. Note the comments.

[Wiggo]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Here. Since a lot of the options overlap, I use Chain Variations to also have it serve as a 'Mark as DNF' chain. Note the comments.

Attachment 203812

I‘m looking forward for testing it.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Here. Since a lot of the options overlap, I use Chain Variations to also have it serve as a 'Mark as DNF' chain. Note the comments.

Attachment 203812

Templates used. You may need to adjust things.

Set #lastread. (If you don't use Kobo Utilities, you can just replace this with a predefined value for current datetime.)

program:
	
## Check Kobo status column. If it's empty, set to current datetime.
	if $#kobostatus=='' then format_date(today(),'iso')
## If kobostatus is populated, date imports from Kobo Utilities - don't overwrite!
	else $$#lastread
	fi

Add dnf to admintags:

program: list_union($#admintags, 'dnf', ',')

Increment #timesread:

program: $$#timesread + 1

Add dates to #readdates:

program:
	list_union(strcat(format_date($$#lastread, 'MMM d yyyy')), $#readdates, ',')

The other SFEs are either predefined or ask-on-runtime.