Friday, January 25, 2013

My Library/Owncloud application project

I've slowed my posting frequency, recently, in part because of my new project : creating an application/plugin for OwnCloud (v5.0), that should at first enable the management of a personal library in his own Cloud. Featurewise, it'll try to at least mirror COPS, but based on the Owncloud infrastructure (database included) rather than a Calibre backend.

Here is a quick screenshot of the Web view (an ebook's details) of the current version.




I grant you, that's ugly as sin. I'm not at my best (understatement) with  HTML/CSS/JS/Whatever. But it looks like it may be working \o/ !

Here are the planned features. order by rough priority, with asterisks for the already implemented ones.

Feeding it:

  • * Every epub file stored (through the "Files application" or synchronization) to the Owncloud install are listed, with a detailed page, enabling download.
  • Multi-format management, perhaps linking/using mobi/azw/kf8 files
  • acquisition through synchronization with shelves on other OPDS servers, or to a general catalog for widely freely available ebooks. Take care to authentification questions.
  • Acquisition through access to an external mailbox and import of attached files. Relevan messages should be filtered by email sender, content, subject line...

Web Access:

  • * Access to own personal library in pure Web mode, through connection on Owncloud, and access to the specific application. The major metadata are extracted form the source files and displayed, Cover (an thumbnail) included. A download link is also available.
  • Ordering based on different criteria ("feed date", publication date, title, author etc.)
  • Filtering by author/title/series and other facets.
  • Metadata update, without touching the original file, but forwarding the updated version.
  • Online "streaming" reading Javascript application

OPDS access:

  • * OPDS Feed with access to the whole library. This feed is only available to the identified user
  • OPDS 1.1 conformity
  • Filtering/sorting and multi-format functionality, mirroring those of the Web access.

Sharing:
  • Fine grained sharing of the Library (without download links), displaying the details of the books, but without DL links.
  • Share annotations books, either general (review, notation), or content-specific (text blocks, highlights etc.).
  • Possibly limited DL availability.

I've shared (and will keep it up to date) the source code http://github.com/TheSFReader,
If you've any trouble to install or test, or any suggestion to add to the features planning, please suggest !

1 comment:

  1. Deeply inspiring. Would love to see more work on this - it could easily be a replacement for Calibre in my day-to-day use. Let me know how I can help - I'm a frontend designer.

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