/webook_server

💩📖 Worst E-book server - light weight OPDS and web server that converts ebook formats on the fly, using Python (2 or 3) and optional Calibre convert

Primary LanguagePythonGNU General Public License v3.0GPL-3.0

-- coding: utf-8 --

webook_server - Worst E-book server

Home page https://github.com/clach04/webook_server

Table Of Contents

Table of contents generated with markdown-toc

Overview

This is either:

  • 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 The wee book server
  • 💩📖 The worst ebook conversion server

Basic ebook server that doesn't require a database.

Given a directory of (possibly directories of) ebooks serve a web (http) interface of the files and automatically convert to the desired format (incomplete examples; mobi, epub, fb2, html, txt, rtf, etc.). The format is specified in the URL and browsing is supported. This works great with a web browser (including the Amazon Kindle Experimental Web Browser) and OPDS client like KOReader.

Features

  • Serve directory of ebooks to either a web browser or an OPDS client
    • Base bones OPDS Spec support - does not pretend to be complete, it implements enough for my basic usage at home
  • Simple search support for both web browser and OPDS client/readers
    • Search for recently added files/books
    • Search is case insensitive (single term) partial match support (i.e. no regex support) for path names and directories
    • Example; book would match a file named "mybook.txt" and a directory called "books"
  • OPTIONAL - Ebook Conversion support (currently via Calibre ebook convert tool)
  • OPDS support has no dependencies outside of Python stdlib BUT will make use of addition WSGI servers if available
    • Tested clients; KOReader (Android and Kindle), AlReader (Android), AlReaderX (Android), FBReader (Android, FBReader Premium (Android)
    • does not support ebook metadata (including covers/thumbails)
    • does not support OPDS Page Streaming Extension
  • Web browser support (Native Kindle (experimental) web browser, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Elink, Lynx, etc.) as well as OPDS clients
  • Works with Python 3.x and 2.6+

Comes with:

Alternatives

The closest equivilents of this tool are KindleGate which only supports conversion to mobi and https://github.com/dubyte/dir2opds.

Also take a look at:

Getting Started

Either use Operating System packages or Python packages

Debian/Ubuntu install dependencies

For Python 2.x deployment:

sudo apt install calibre

For Python 3.x deployment (with calibre ebook-convert exe - likely Python2):

sudo apt install calibre

Python install dependencies

NOTE Currently relies on Calibre ebook-convert (not documented in the Python dependency install notes below).

ONLY needed for the web browser version, not needed for OPDS

If installing/working with a source checkout issue:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Run

cp example_config.json config.json
# Optional; edit config.json with "ebook_dir" (defaults to ./ if omitted) and "temp_dir" (will use OS environment variable TEMP if omitted, if that's missing system temp location) location
python webook_server.py

Then open a browser to http://localhost:8080/... or issue:

curl http://localhost:8080/....

Sample Run

  1. Download the sample_reading_media.zip from https://github.com/clach04/sample_reading_media/releases/tag/v0.1

  2. Extract to local directory, ideally into a directory called sample_reading_media

  3. Create a (or edit existing) config file, for example named sample_reading_media.json

     {
     "ebook_dir": "sample_reading_media"
 }

if setting tmp dir, mkdir -p /tmp/ebookserver/....

  1. Run the server with the config file:

     python webook_server.py sample_reading_media.json

  2. Open Web browser to http://127.0.0.1:8080/ and browse around, for example download

systemd webook service

Systemd service (e.g. for Raspbian).

For more information see:

NOTE directory name for ExecStart and WorkingDirectory in webook.service.

Install

# Potententially edit service; ExecStart, WorkingDirectory, User
# Review config file
sudo cp scripts/webook.service /etc/systemd/system/webook.service
sudo chmod 644 /etc/systemd/system/webook.service
sudo systemctl enable webook.service

Usage

sudo systemctl stop webook.service
sudo systemctl start webook.service
sudo systemctl restart webook.service
sudo systemctl status webook.service  # status and recent logs
sudo systemctl status webook.service -n 100  # show last 100 log entries
journalctl  -u webook.service  # show all logs

systemctl list-unit-files --state=enabled | grep webook

NOTE if changing service files, e.g. adding Environment, restart config (not just specific service):

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart webook.service

Notes and config

json config file

  • config for web server config
  • ebook_dir - directory to serve, if omitted defaults to current directory (./)
  • temp_dir - temporary location on disk to store generated files. Will use OS environment variable TEMP if omitted, if that's missing system temp location. NOTE recommend using a temporary file system, on devices like RaspberryPi and SBCs with SD Cards, recommend using directory that is NOT located on SD Card to preserve card
  • self_url_path - for OPDS server, this is the http address of the server and is required for search to work correctly. Example http://123.45.67.89:8080

Operating System Environment Variables

  • CALIBRE_EBOOK_CONVERT_EXE - full path to ebook-convert exe (if not using Calibre as a library). For Windows do NOT set with double quotes, even for paths with spaces
  • USE_CALIBRE_EBOOK_CONVERT_EXE - if set forces the use of ebook-convert exe (that is, do not use Calibre as a library)
  • TEMP - override for temp disk location, see temp_dir in json config
  • EBOOK_DIR - override for ebook location, see ebook_dir in json config
  • SENTRY_DSN - optional Sentry token - NOT applicable to OPDS server
  • LISTEN_PORT - OPDS override for config file config.port
  • LISTEN_ADDRESS - OPDS override for config file config.host

https / TLS / SSL support

  • There is no https support for the OPDS server.
  • There is no authentication/authorization support
  • Recommendation is to use a reverse proxy (with authentication).

Known working environments

Known to work under Linux with

Debian / Ubuntu / Armbian

DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS" NAME="Ubuntu" VERSION="20.04.3 LTS (Focal Fossa)" ID=ubuntu ID_LIKE=debian PRETTY_NAME="Armbian 21.08.6 Focal" VERSION_ID="20.04"

  • Python 3.8.10 (default, Mar 15 2022, 12:22:08)
    • ebook_conversion calibre_4.99.4

Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)

With:

  • Python 2.7.13 (default, Aug 22 2020, 10:03:02)
    • ebook_conversion calibre_2.75.1
  • Python 3.5.3 (default, Sep 27 2018, 17:25:39)
    • calibre ebook-convert exe version 2.75.1

Using the OS packages for Python and Calibre.

Microsoft Windows

  • Python 3.7.3 (v3.7.3:ef4ec6ed12, Mar 25 2019, 22:22:05) [MSC v.1916 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
    • calibre ebook-convert exe version 4.2.0

cURL client

For testing. By default cURL will be detected by webook_opds_server.py as an OPDS client (rather than as a web browser), this can be influenced via the http accept header.

curl -v --header "ACCEPT: /" # NOTE this happens to be the default so this is not actually needed curl -v --header "ACCEPT: text/html" # convince OPDS server this client is a web browser