ebk-export

To export the list of books stored in your library along with their metadata, run ebk-export and redirect the output to a file:

ebk-export -l /path/to/library > data.json

Output structure

The JSON document sent to stdout has a top-level key “Books”, mapping to an array of records for each book:

{ "Books": [ {...}, {...} ] }

The book records contain:

• metadata fields, such as “Title” and “Authors”;
• the path to the book directory, relative to the library root;
• the name of the cover image file, if there is one; and
• the list of e-book files for that book.

{
  "Title": "The Odyssey",
  "Authors": [ "Homer", "Samuel Butler" ],
  "Date": 1898,
  ...,
  "Path": "Homer/The Odyssey (3)"
  "Cover": "cover.jpg",
  "Files": [
    "/path/to/library/Homer/The Odyssey (3)/The Odyssey - Homer.epub"
  ],
}

Querying the exported data

The exported JSON document can be filtered using jq.

For example, to print the title and list of authors for each book:

ebk-export | jq '.Books[] | [.Title, (.Authors | join(", "))] | join("; ")'

"Blood of Elves; Andrzej Sapkowski"
"Insectivorous Plants; Charles Darwin"
"The Odyssey; Homer, Samuel Butler"
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Lewis Carroll"
"Through the Looking-Glass; Lewis Carroll"

Or to select only books published by Project Gutenberg, and pipe the corresponding EPUB files to fzf for interactive selection:

query='.Books[] | select(.Publisher | contains("Gutenberg"))'
query=$query' | .Files[] | select(endswith(".epub"))'
ebk-export | jq "$query" | fzf

"/path/to/library/.../.../Insectivorous Plants - Charles Darwin.epub"