calibre2jellyfin

Python script to construct a Jellyfin ebook library from a Calibre library.

Linux

(The Windows version of this script is maintained as a separate project. Please see wincalibre2jellyfin.)

Overview

• Created folder structure (foldermode in .cfg) is one of:
  • .../author/series/book/...
  • .../series/book/...
  • .../book/...
• Destination book folder contains
  • symlink to (single) book file in Calibre library (based on configured order of preference)
  • symlink to cover image in Calibre library
  • copy, possibly modified, of Calibre's metadata file
• Books are selected for inclusion by listing author folders in the .cfg file
• Series handling
  • Foldermode is author/series/book
    • Suitable for fiction libraries
    • The script will attempt to extract series and series index from Calibre's metadata file.
    • If found, the target book folder name will be prepended with the series index. Optionally, the metadata <dc:title> and the <meta name="calibre:title_sort" content="...sort title..."> may be treated in the same way.
    • A short header identifying the index and series is prepended to the book description.
    • If series info is expected but not found, the structure collapses to .../author/book/.... and no mangling is performed.
  • Foldermode is series/book
    • Suitable for eComic libraries
    • This mode is similar to author/series/book above except there is no grouping by author, only by series and book, unless the series info is missing in which case the structure collapses to .../book/...
  • Foldermode is book
    • Suitable for non-fiction libraries
    • Books are organized strictly by book title
• Multiple output libraries may be configured

Example author/series/book structure

Example assumes script has been configured to prefer .epub types over .azw and .mobi.

Calibre store	Created Jellyfin store
└── Author/ └── Book A/ │ ├── cover.jpg │ ├── metadata.opf │ ├── Book A.azw │ └── Book A.epub ├── Book B/ │ ├── cover.jpg │ ├── metadata.opf │ ├── Book B.mobi │ └── Book B.epub	└── Author/ └── Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet Series/ ├── 001 - Book A/ │ ├── cover.jpg <- symlink │ ├── metadata.opf <- modified copy │ └── Book A.epub <- symlink ├── 002 - Book B/ │ ├── cover.jpg <- symlink │ ├── metadata.opf <- modified copy │ └── Book B.epub <- symlink

Jellyfin will display a drillable folder structure similarly to the way it does for movies, shows, and music. Jellyfin will extract, display, and sort by the mangled book title that is prepended with the series index.

Example series/book structure

The "series/book" option is intended for use with eComics, thanks for this go to Cudail.

Calibre store	Created Jellyfin store
└── Author M/ └── Comic A/ ├── cover.jpg ├── metadata.opf └── Comic A.cbz └── Author N/ └── Comic B/ ├── cover.jpg ├── metadata.opf └── Comic B.cbz	└── Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet Series/ ├── 001 - Comic A/ │ ├── cover.jpg <- symlink │ ├── metadata.opf <- modified copy │ └── Comic A.cbz <- symlink ├── 002 - Comic B/ │ ├── cover.jpg <- symlink │ ├── metadata.opf <- modified copy │ └── Comic B.cbz <- symlink

Changes

• 2024-09-02 (Current version) (Main branch)
  • Add author's name to book description.
  • Add support for fractional series indices maintaining sort
    • '' -> '999'
    • '3' -> '003'
    • '34' -> '034'
    • '345' -> '345'
    • '3456' -> '3456'
    • '3.2' -> '003.02' <- new
    • Notes
      • Any series books that had fractional indices prior to this version will appear as new book folders with the index formatted in the new way and leaving the prior formatted versions as duplicates. You will probably want to delete, in Jellyfin, the old versions.
  • Add warning when book file of configured type not found in book folder
• 2024-06-19
  • Add support for "series/book" mode, thanks to Cudail
• 2024-02-21
  • Coding/style improvements and lint cleanup only. No functional changes. If you already have the 2024-01-27 version installed there is no real reason to download this version.
• 2024-01-27
  • Add support for mangling the metadata title sort value
  • Make metadata mangling behavior configurable (new configuration parameters)
    • mangleMetaTitle = [1 | 0]
    • mangleMetaTitleSort = [1 | 0]
  • Add command line option to force update of all metadata files.
    • --update-all-metadata

Dependencies

• Python 3

Installation

1. In your browser navigate to "https://github.com/shawn61cp/calibre2jellyfin"
2. Click the green "Code" button
3. In the resulting dropdown, just over halfway down, find and click on "Download ZIP".
4. Save the zip file somewhere convenient and extract it.  We will call this EXTRACT_FOLDER.
5. Change to directory EXTRACT_FOLDER/calibre2jellyfin-main
6. In a terminal:
7.      $ chmod 755 calibre2jellyfin.py
8. Choose a location to install the script.  You may want to add this location to your path.  We will call this INSTALL_FOLDER.
9. In a terminal:
10.     $ cp calibre2jellyfin.py INSTALL_FOLDER/
11.     $ cp calibre2jellyfin.cfg ~/.config/

Usage

• Edit the ~/.config/calibre2jellyfin.cfg file before first use.
  • Following the comments in the .cfg, set up your source and destination storage locations (libraries), your folder mode, your list of authors, and title mangling.
• If you added the calibre2jellyfin.py script to a location on your path, in a terminal:
  • $ calibre2jellyfin.py
• If not, include the full path to the script:
  • $ INSTALL_FOLDER/calibre2jellyfin.py

Upgrading

Two things need to be accomplished:

1. Replace your current script, wherever it was originally installed, with the new one.
   • This can be done basically by following installation steps 1 - 10. Do not perform step 11 since that would destroy your current configuration.
2. Add any new config options to your existing configuration file.
   • This can be done by copying and pasting any new configuration parameters from the new sample configuration into your current configuration, or even just editing your current configuration. New configuration options are listed in the Changes section and also in the sample .cfg file.

Command line options

usage: calibre2jellyfin.py [-h] [--update-all-metadata]

A utility to construct a Jellyfin ebook library from a Calibre library. Configuration file "/home/shawn/.config/calibre2jellyfin.cfg" is required.

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --update-all-metadata
                        Useful to force a one-time update of all metadata files, for instance when configurable metadata mangling options have changed. (Normally metadata files are
                        only updated when missing or out-of-date.)

Real Life

The installation and usage instructions above work fine but other situations may be encountered or other conveniences desired.

Permissions on created Jellyfin library

The usage/installation steps described above yield a Jellyfin store that is owned by whatever user ran the script. Jellyfin can serve up this library because most default user configurations under Linux create files as world-readable. However, if you make the library owned by Jellyfin (the jellyfin Linux user/service account), you will be able to delete books through the Jellyfin interface assuming you have administrative permission on the library within the Jellyfin app itself.

If your situation is like mine, cleaning up my Calibre library, ensuring the right metadata and covers got downloaded etc., is an ongoing task. If you discover an issue while browsing your books within Jellyfin, you can delete the Jellyfin book (within Jellyfin), go back to your Calibre library, clean things up, and then re-run the script. Et voilà! Depending on the issue, you might not even have to delete the book from Jellyfin; Rerunning the script might be sufficient. However, deleting the book, or even the author folder if there were many changes, from Jellyfin does guarantee a clean re-creation.

Note that because the book and cover files are soft linked, and the folders and metadata file are copies, when you delete a book or author through the Jellyfin interface, you are only affecting the Jellyfin library and not your precious Calibre library.

For myself, I arrange to run the script under the jellyfin account. This will result in the files and folders output by the script being owned by jellyfin. The default home directory for the jellyfin user is /var/lib/jellyfin. I create the path and install the script to /var/lib/jellyfin/.local/bin/calibre2jellyfin.py. Similarly I install the configuration file to /var/lib/jellyfin/.config/calibre2jellyfin.cfg.

Set up the script under the jellyfin account

The steps to accomplish the above follow. I refer again to the EXTRACT_FOLDER as described in the installation section above. Finally, jellyfin by default does not permit logins so these steps will be performed as root.

Change to root: $ sudo su -

Create the paths for the script and its configuration # mkdir -p /var/lib/jellyfin/.local/bin # mkdir -p /var/lib/jellyfin/.config

Copy the script and configuration. Note: If you set up a .cfg earlier, copy that instead of the sample .cfg from the EXTRACT_FOLDER. # cp EXTRACT_FOLDER/calibre2jellyfin-main/calibre2jellyfin.py /var/lib/jellyfin/.local/bin/ # cp EXTRACT_FOLDER/calibre2jellyfin-main/calibre2jellyfin.cfg /var/lib/jellyfin/.config/

Change ownership of the files and paths created above to jellyfin. # chown -R jellyfin:jellyfin /var/lib/jellyfin/.local # chown -R jellyfin:jellyfin /var/lib/jellyfin/.config

If you did not do so during the installation steps, make the script executable.
# chmod 755 /var/lib/jellyfin/.local/bin/calibre2jellyfin.py

Now, if you did not already have a .cfg set up, continue as root and edit the configuration file /var/lib/jellyfin/.config/calibre2jellyfin.cfg as described under Usage above.

Finally, exit from the root shell. # exit

Running the installed script

I find that when dealing with accounts that do not permit login that the runuser utility is convenient. Possibly this is habit. :) To run the script I execute the following from my own account. $ sudo runuser -u jellyfin -- /var/lib/jellyfin/.local/bin/calibre2jellyfin.py

Scheduling the script to run automatically

You can use CRON to run the script regularly to keep your Jellyfin library updated. The steps below assume the script has been set up under the jellyfin user as described above. The cron job is set up under the root account but again uses runuser to execute it as jellyfin.

Change to the root account $ sudo su -

Start the cron editor # crontab -e

Add a line like this to the cron file. The redirection causes any error messages to be included in the mailed log (if you have that enabled). The example below runs the script every night at 11:00 PM. 0 23 * * * runuser -u jellyfin -- /var/lib/jellyfin/.local/bin/calibre2jellyfin.py 2>&1

Save the file, exit the editor, and exit the root shell.

Calibre Author Folders

Typically the Calibre author folder is named exactly as the author appears in the Calibre interface. Occasionally however it is not. I have seen this when Calibre displays authors as "Jane Doe & John Q. Public" but the folder name is actually just "Jane Doe". Also when the list of authors is very long, as happens in technical books, Calibre will limit the length of the folder name.

If you find that an expected author does not show up in the created Jellyfin library, double check that the author as listed in the .cfg file matches the actual folder name in the Calibre library.

Another thing I have encountered is when multiple versions of the author name exist, such as "Public, John Q." and "John Q. Public", and they are then consolidated, Calibre actually moves the books into the folder matching the consolidated name. If the author name configured for calibre2jellyfin happened to match the author name that "went away", updates to that author's books may appear to die, or you might see two different versions of the same author in Jellyfin. The solution is to just delete, in Jellyfin, one or both authors, ensure that the author configured in the .cfg file matches the Calibre author folder, then re-run the script to have them cleanly re-created. Jellyfin will eventually detect the changes and update the display contents. You can also right-click on an item within Jellyfin and request an immediate metadata refresh. Even so sometimes it will take a few minutes for Jellyfin to recognize the changes.

Odds and Ends

• I have noticed that Jellyfin does not re-paginate if you resize the browser window or change the zoom factor after you have opened the book. However if you do these before opening the book it does so nicely.