Book scraping plugin

[xevidroid]

There are a few options to add movies to Launchbox, and for music we now have a separate app altogether. Is anyone interested in making a book scraping plugin? If not, what would it take to make one? I'm not new to programming but i've never made a plugin for Launchbox.

[starplayer]

What exactly do you mean?

[xevidroid]

Something kinda like this:
 

 

But for books, so that we could make a new "platform" for them and download the information by putting in the title or the ISBN, kinda like Librarything allows you to do. I would love to have all of my collections in the same app (movies, books, games). I don't know how much of the existing code for these plugins could be repurposed, but aside from the API call to a book database website the work shouldn't be impossible.

[damageinc86]

I have actually been thinking that it would be way cool for a launchbox-like program with a graphic bookshelf and books (spine view to search/browse), to someday be used to browse actual library holdings.  It would feel more interactive than the plain search that they have.  When you selected the book based on search you'd see the spine graphic pop outward from the shelf of books and then if selected it would jump up to like the manual view in pdf with the book cover and you could open it.  Then "slide" it back in with ESC, and either search again, or "scroll" the shelves manually to see what is there.  The shelves would be a representation of what they physically have.  If it's scanned then you could view it, but if it's not, then it would just be an info page view about it.

[sundogak]

Although not LB, there are programs (free) like Calibre that provide graphic bookshelf formats via webserver with book covers and point click download/read of all major ebook formats.  The main utility has scrapers to download book covers, isbn, book data, etc for ebooks so might be idea for those that are coders to see how it uses the various APIs.  I saw some plugins for loan-out libraries but haven't tried that. Interface isn't quite as elegant as LB but I typically only use as "home library" which browse with iPad, download, and read on portable device rather than via web server viewer.  One advantage of it over say a LB model is that can browse to it from any device on internal network without having to install anything on client side.

[xevidroid]

5 hours ago, sundogak said:

Although not LB, there are programs (free) like Calibre that provide graphic bookshelf formats via webserver with book covers and point click download/read of all major ebook formats.  The main utility has scrapers to download book covers, isbn, book data, etc for ebooks so might be idea for those that are coders to see how it uses the various APIs.  I saw some plugins for loan-out libraries but haven't tried that. Interface isn't quite as elegant as LB but I typically only use as "home library" which browse with iPad, download, and read on portable device rather than via web server viewer.  One advantage of it over say a LB model is that can browse to it from any device on internal network without having to install anything on client side.

I have quite a few reasons to prefer Launchbox to stuff like calibre or LibraryThing (which I both tried).

A) the UI is quite underwhelming and that's a good part of the appeal for me

B) I already have a lifetime license for Launchbox and I'm invested in making it better

C) I'd like to have all my stuff in a single application, not 3 or 4

D) Launchbox seems sustainable long term, being DRM free, easily to backup and plugin friendly. This is a big thing for a collection app that I could go on to use for years and years

E) calibre is too much ebook focused and my collection is 99% paper books. LB on the other hand is unintrusive and unopinionated

Anyway if the code from calibre is available somewhere that would certainly be useful to make a port of LB.

[Bl00dsh1n3]

On 12/13/2018 at 3:41 AM, xevidroid said:

I have quite a few reasons to prefer Launchbox to stuff like calibre or LibraryThing (which I both tried).

A) the UI is quite underwhelming and that's a good part of the appeal for me

B) I already have a lifetime license for Launchbox and I'm invested in making it better

C) I'd like to have all my stuff in a single application, not 3 or 4

D) Launchbox seems sustainable long term, being DRM free, easily to backup and plugin friendly. This is a big thing for a collection app that I could go on to use for years and years

E) calibre is too much ebook focused and my collection is 99% paper books. LB on the other hand is unintrusive and unopinionated

Anyway if the code from calibre is available somewhere that would certainly be useful to make a port of LB.

I was also interested in this idea; I was really excited when I found out Launchbox can download comics (and graphic novels/manga/so forth) but I wanted some way to take my calibre stuff and move it into Launchbox just as seamlessly. Trying to do it the same way was...kinda messy. Though, between 3-4 libraries, I probably have over 2000 reading materials (that's stories, light novels, paperback books, and actual novels; probably not as impressive as some other collections but the content itself is more impressive than the number). If there's a way for me to gather all that together in one convenient place, you couldn't put a pen in my hands fast enough to sign on for that.

 

[Retrofrogg]

Have you seen @C-Beats's comics app?

Edited December 23, 2022 by Retrofrogg

[Bl00dsh1n3]

15 hours ago, Retrofrogg said:

Have you seen @C-Beats's comics app?

Thanks for the tip! Just found out that CDisplayEX reads PDF’s and ePub files so this is super helpful.  

[romario23]

On 12/16/2022 at 2:19 AM, Bl00dsh1n3 said:

I was also interested in this idea; I was really excited when I found out Launchbox can download comics (and graphic novels/manga/so forth) but I wanted some way to take my calibre stuff and move it into Launchbox just as seamlessly. Trying to do it the same way was...kinda messy. Though, between 3-4 libraries, I probably have over 2000 reading materials (that's stories, light novels, paperback books, and actual novels; probably not as impressive as some other collections but the content itself is more impressive than the number). If there's a way for me to gather all that together in one convenient place, you couldn't put a pen in my hands fast enough to sign on for that.

 

 

 Calibre into Launchbox. Honestly, organization is key when you're juggling that much content, and I felt the same way when I needed help managing my workload. I found a resource like 99papers https://99papers.com/ to be invaluable for keeping things organized when it comes to academic work. Having everything streamlined in one place can make such a difference!

 

It sounds like you're really passionate about organizing your collection, and I totally get the challenge of keeping everything in one spot, especially when you're dealing with multiple libraries and formats. Having 2000 reading materials is already super impressive, and it’s more about the quality than the number anyway! It would be amazing if there was a smoother way to integrate Calibre with Launchbox. If a seamless solution for managing all that content in one place came along, I'd be right there with you, ready to dive in and streamline the process!