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I'm trying to create a epub uploader to iBook in python. I need a python lib to extract book information. Before implementing this by myself I wonder if anyone know a already made python lib that does it.

Kara
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xiamx
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    I am voting to leave this question open, since it seems that at the time of asking, there was no library to implement the required functionality, and I think that the accepted answer contains valuable code. – Gustav Bertram Dec 05 '13 at 09:09
  • The comment is not for you, but for the people voting to close the question. There is no reason to unaccept the answer, particularly as it solved your problem. – Gustav Bertram Dec 10 '13 at 13:42
  • Closing does not mean deleting, the answer is attracting link only answers and maybe spam in future. – bummi May 11 '15 at 05:19

4 Answers4

49

An .epub file is a zip-encoded file containing a META-INF directory, which contains a file named container.xml, which points to another file usually named Content.opf, which indexes all the other files which make up the e-book (summary based on http://www.jedisaber.com/eBooks/tutorial.asp ; full spec at http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf/opf2.0/download/ )

The following Python code will extract the basic meta-information from an .epub file and return it as a dict.

import zipfile
from lxml import etree

def epub_info(fname):
    def xpath(element, path):
        return element.xpath(
            path,
            namespaces={
                "n": "urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container",
                "pkg": "http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf",
                "dc": "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/",
            },
        )[0]

    # prepare to read from the .epub file
    zip_content = zipfile.ZipFile(fname)
      
    # find the contents metafile
    cfname = xpath(
        etree.fromstring(zip_content.read("META-INF/container.xml")),
        "n:rootfiles/n:rootfile/@full-path",
    ) 
    
    # grab the metadata block from the contents metafile
    metadata = xpath(
        etree.fromstring(zip_content.read(cfname)), "/pkg:package/pkg:metadata"
    )
    
    # repackage the data
    return {
        s: xpath(metadata, f"dc:{s}/text()")
        for s in ("title", "language", "creator", "date", "identifier")
    }

Sample output:

{
    'date': '2009-12-26T17:03:31',
    'identifier': '25f96ff0-7004-4bb0-b1f2-d511ca4b2756',
    'creator': 'John Grisham',
    'language': 'UND',
    'title': 'Ford County'
}
Community
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Hugh Bothwell
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3

Something like epub-tools, for example? But that's mostly about writing epub format (from various possible sources), as is epubtools (similar spelling, different project). For reading it, I'd try the companion project threepress, a Django app for showing epub books on a browser -- haven't looked at that code, but I imagine that in order to show the book it must surely first be able to read it;-).

Alex Martelli
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1

Check out the epub module. It looks like an easy option.

marbdq
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0

I wound up here after looking for something similar and was inspired by Mr. Bothwell's code snippet to start my own project. If anyone is interested ... http://epubzilla.odeegan.com/

Nicholas O'Deegan
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