export routine - splitting title to 2 fields + including covers ???

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export routine - splitting title to 2 fields + including covers ???

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1seasaltresearch
Jan 6, 2013, 9:34 pm

hello:
i hope i have posted this question in the correct spot.

is it possible to modify the export routine or are we stuck with its limitations?
i want to bring my catalog into my iphone app (my bookcase) that supports import by csv.

i want my export file to
1: export title as 2 fields (e.g. title and subtitle). currently exports as 1 field with : segrating the title and subtitle
2: export to include my covers
3: export to include the flag Library Thing uses on primary author
and include fields of
4: number of pages
5: publisher name

---
how do I get access to the code of the export routine if it cannot be modified thru LT link, to perhaps create a second one to meet these needs.

thankyou

2jjwilson61
Jan 7, 2013, 11:47 am

1. LT stores the title and subtitle together in one field so it cannot reliably break them apart based on punctuation that is not universal.

2. Most LT covers come from Amazon and I believe they are not allowed to export those. Maybe user-chosen covers could be exported and I believe that's been requested before in the group Recommended Site Improvements.

3. I'm not sure what this means. There's an author field and an other author field in the book record. I'm not sure if both get exported or not.

It's not possible to alter the export routines but for #1 you could export the data in csv and write a program to split the title into title and subtitle.

3jjmcgaffey
Jan 10, 2013, 9:53 pm

And if you do the TD export instead of CSV, it's got a lot more fields (and is missing some that are in CSV, but I don't find those fields helpful - Subjects is ridiculous). The TD-export includes the Publication field (not a separate publisher name, but it's in there), and...(goes to check)...no, sorry, no export of the Physical Data fields yet so no page numbers. You'd have to put them in yourself, as a Comment or Tag or some such.

RE: primary author - there's two separate places where LT records the author. The first, which can be exported, is in your own catalog; one author is entered as Author and any others as Other Authors. The second, which has the flag on the primary author, is joint data - CK-type information, shared among all books in the work - and that can't be exported, unfortunately. So the primary author on your exported copy will be whoever you put into the Author field.

The TD export (and the CSV one) are easily opened in a spreadsheet program. I use a macro in LibreOffice Calc to add a few fields and tidy up some others, then save it as .csv and import it to HanDBase. Or you could modify it some other way (write a program to process the export), but that works for me.