Get a book description from the title

README.md

Using with Obsidian and the Templater plugin

1. Download kring.py somewhere and rename as just kring. (e.g. to /usr/local/bin/kring)
2. Add a Templater template {{book}} with the content: /usr/local/bin/kring "{{note_title}}" "path/to/vault/Covers/{{note_title}}.png"
3. CHANGE the Timeout setting to at least 20 as the command can take a while.
4. To use, make a new note with "Book Title" or "Book Title - Author" as the note title and insert the {{book}} template.

kring.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3

# pip install html2text typer
# Run as kring "<title> - <author>" "path/to/cover.png"

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from xml.etree import ElementTree as ET
from html2text import html2text
import subprocess
import typer
import typing

CALIBRE = "/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS/fetch-ebook-metadata"

def main(note_title: str, cover: typing.Optional[str] = typer.Argument(None)):
    if " - " in note_title:
        title, author = note_title.split(" - ")
    else:
        title, author = note_title, None
    commands = [CALIBRE, "-t", title, "-o"]
    if author is not None:
        commands += ["-a", author]
    if cover is not None:
        commands += ["-c", cover]
    book = subprocess.check_output(commands, stderr=subprocess.DEVNULL)
    if cover is not None:
        print(f"![[{note_title}.png]]")
    root = ET.fromstring(book)
    for child in root[0]:
        if "description" in child.tag:
            print(html2text(child.text).replace('\n', ' '))


if __name__ == "__main__":
    typer.run(main)