Calibre Search Native Application

Introduction

This is the supporting application required for the calibre-search-chrome and calibre-search-firefox web extensions.

These extensions allow you to quickly perform a search against your local calibre library based on the selected text or links on a web page.

For more information, please refer to the FAQ

Python based calibre-search.py

The default installation requires a Python script calibre-search.py for the implementation of the native application. It has a wrapper calibre-search.cmd for ease of execution on Windows.

The downside of this approach is it requires the user to have Python 3.5+ installed on their machine/in their PATH.

Go based calibre-search.exe

Just for funsies I created a Go-based application that does the equivalent of calibre-search.py and calibre-search.cmd. It compiles into a single executable called calibre-search.exe.

The advantage for a user with this approach is that it means they do not have to have Python 3.5+ installed on their machine/in their PATH.

The one negative of an executable is that it will get detected by Windows resulting in a Security scan required message. It won't actually find anything wrong (nor should it!), the functionality will work ok but some users may get freaked out by it.

I will package this up as another option for users soon once I add an icon resource/metadata and update the build/release scripts...

.NET 6 based CalibreSearchApp.Tester

This .NET 6.0 project is for verifying the host application setup. It actually has several purposes:

• Allows an end user to troubleshoot their Chrome or Firefox host application installation.
• Provided a handy test harness for developing the golang executable above.

This tester executable allows you to verify:

• The registry keys are present and pointing to a manifest .json file
• The manifest .json file is present and is valid json
• The manifest file has a path field pointing to the executable.
• The executable is present.
• The executable responds correctly to stdin messages and with expected output.

You can also invoke a search against your local calibre library to prove that works too (if you have calibre running).

Since I am not expecting any ongoing issues I am not planning to offer this as a built executable at the moment. However the code is here if the need for troubleshooting arises again.

Donations

If you enjoy my calibre plugins or extensions, please feel free to show your appreciation!

paypal.me/kiwidudeOz