24

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
  • 5,650
  • 15
  • 48
  • 55
xiamx
  • 5,210
  • 5
  • 21
  • 31
  • 2
    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

42

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 get_epub_info(fname):
    ns = {
        'n':'urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container',
        'pkg':'http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf',
        'dc':'http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/'
    }

    # prepare to read from the .epub file
    zip = zipfile.ZipFile(fname)

    # find the contents metafile
    txt = zip.read('META-INF/container.xml')
    tree = etree.fromstring(txt)
    cfname = tree.xpath('n:rootfiles/n:rootfile/@full-path',namespaces=ns)[0]

    # grab the metadata block from the contents metafile
    cf = zip.read(cfname)
    tree = etree.fromstring(cf)
    p = tree.xpath('/pkg:package/pkg:metadata',namespaces=ns)[0]

    # repackage the data
    res = {}
    for s in ['title','language','creator','date','identifier']:
        res[s] = p.xpath('dc:%s/text()'%(s),namespaces=ns)[0]

    return res

Sample output:

{
    'date': '2009-12-26T17:03:31',
    'identifier': '25f96ff0-7004-4bb0-b1f2-d511ca4b2756',
    'creator': 'John Grisham',
    'language': 'UND',
    'title': 'Ford County'
}
Hugh Bothwell
  • 50,702
  • 6
  • 75
  • 95
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
  • 762,786
  • 156
  • 1,160
  • 1,345
2

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

marbdq
  • 1,197
  • 7
  • 5
1

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
  • 39
  • 1
  • 5