Calibre2Opds Index
| OBSOLETE
This page is now obsolete. The up-to-date page can be found here. |
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| Home Page |
Calibre2opds User Guide | ||||||
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| Overview | Installing | Generating | Publishing | Using | Troubleshooting | Development | |
[edit] What is calibre2opds
Calibre2opds is an open source tool that can generate OPDS and HTML based catalogs from the metadata database of the Calibre eBook library manager.
Features of calibre2opds include:
- Works in conjunction with the Calibre e-Book library management
- Generates OPDS compatible XML catalogs that can be used with compatible e-Book readers. These include Stanza on the iPod/iPhone/iPad and Aldiko on android based systems
- Generates HTML based catalogs that allowing access from any browser-based ebook reader (e.g. a netbook with Firefox and ePUBReader). The HTML catalogs can also be used as a way of allowing books to be downloaded using a Browser for later transfer to an eReader device.
- The generated catalogs have a hierarchical structured to help with navigating large ebook collections.
- The catalogs can be both generated and used without requiring the Calibre software to be running at the time.
- Catalogs can include cross-references, and external links to interesting web pages about your books.
- The generated catalogs can be hosted on a server visible to the public Internet so that your catalogs and eBooks can made accessible from anywhere.
- HTML catalogs support a browse-by-cover mode for those who prefer this way of selecting books.
- The catalog generation is highly configurable to tailor output to your specific requirements.
The project is maintained on Launchpad. This site allows you to:
- Raise bug reports or enhancement requests.
If you want to raise an enhancement request then proceed as if you were raising a bug. This gets it into the tracking system which both makes it visible to the developers and provides a mechanism for keeping track of status. - Ask questions about Calibre2Opds
- Browse the answers to questions raised earlier by other users
This documentation is maintained in wiki format. Users are encouraged to enhance it in light of their own experience in using calibre2opds. In particular if you have a problem and resolve it consider adding the details to the Trouble Shooting section of the documentation.
[edit] Calibre2opds v Calibre catalogs
As the Calibre program includes its own Content Server, one question that many users ask is why should they use calibre2opds catalogs rather than simply sticking with the Calibre Content server? This is a comparison of the two approaches:
Calibre's content server is active. You must install it, with all its dependencies, and then run it and maintain it. The hosting system must therefore be capable of running the full set of Calibre software. The Calibre library must be visible to the Content server, or probably copied to where it is is running. The Calibre Content Server uses a significant amount of memory, which might be precious on the server (I often run on servers with 512kb total ram). The Content Sever wants to talk HTTP over TCP, meaning that anything in front of it must act like a client. It doesn't support SSL (authentication is visible) or password-per-user. However, it does give up-to-date answers, which is a very good thing. Searching for books meeting specific criteria can be done which is another good thing
calibre2opds generates static HTML pages. In effect this generates a web site for downloading your books which means that you do not require Calibre to be running to use the catalogs. This gives you a much wider choice of where you can host the calibe2opds catalogs. For instance it can be hosted on web servers in environments that would not be capable of running the Calibre Content server. Calibre2opds can use facilites of the hosting environment such as SSL and its security features. As an example if using the apache web server calibre2opds can run as a virtual host and use the Apache security features to give finer grain security than the Calibre Content server can offer.
Calibre2opds does not have the search facilities of the Calibre Content Serve but it makes up for this by having a heirarchically stuctured catalog which many find easier to use than the flat catalog structure of the Calibre Content Server. The user can configure many options of the catalog structure to get it optimised for their particular use. The OPDS standard is still evolving, and the OPDS catalogs can be optimised for specific devices that do not necessarily support the full OPDs standard. YOu have to rerun the Calibre2opds generate process to make books newly added to your Calibre library visible as changes are not picked up dynamically, aklthough you can configure your system to autoamtically run the generation regular intervals.
The following table shows key featues of the two different approaches for delivering ebooks over networks.
| Feature | Calibre Content Server | calibre2opds |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-Platform | Windows, Linux, MacOS | Windows, Linux, MacOS |
| Developed using | Python | Java |
| Open Source | Yes | Yes |
| Run from USB stick | Yes | Yes |
| OPDS catalogs | Yes | Yes |
| HTML catalogs | Yes | Yes |
| Calibre needs to be running | Yes (Content Server component) | No |
| Built-in Web server | Yes | No - uses external web server |
| Custom Column Support | Yes | No (on wish list) |
| Run under Web Server | No | Yes |
| Security | username/password | hosting environment security |
| SSL supported | No | Yes (if hosting environment supports it) |
| Dropbox support | No | Yes |
| Dynamic Updating | Yes | No |
| Search supported | Yes | No |
| Nook/Trook mode | No | Yes |
| Structured catalogs | No | Authors, Series, Tags, Recent Books, Ratings (optional) |
| Multiple catalog levels | No | Yes |
| Customisable catalog sections | No | Yes |
| Split sections by letter | No | Yes |
| sub-levels | No | Yes |
| External Links | No | Yes |
| Internal Links | No | Yes |
| Suppress Download links (browse only) | No | Yes |
| Coverflow in HTML catalogs | No | Yes |
| Limit formats in OPDS catalogs | No | Yes |
| Limit formats in HTML catalogs | No | Yes |
| Publish/NAS mode | No | Yes |
| Profiles for catalog settings | No | Yes |
