Native KOReader Reading Session Sync

[ScyllPoesis]

What would you like Grimmory to do?

Currently if users want to read on a supported personal device like a KOReader, they download the book (usually via OPDS), and we can track progress with the KOReader Sync server provided by the application. Doing so however means we give up the reading session tracking, which means much less data and fun insights for the user.

We have a handful of external plugins that enable this, like xcashy/kosync-booklore-stats and the legacy fork by WorldTeacher of the original BL repo, but I'm wondering if a "first-party" KOReader plugin or integration in some form is in the cards, along with better API support for managing reading sessions.

What problem does this solve for you?

I like data, but I pretty much never read directly from the Grimmory's UI or native application, so if I can have my reading sessions properly and accurately tracked by the app without relying on third party plugins and infrastructure, I'd be a happy camper.

Anything else?

No response

Want to help out?

I'm happy to help test and give feedback

Before submitting

• I've searched existing discussions and this hasn't been suggested yet
• I've reviewed this report and have completed it as fully as I can

[pkuehne]

This was raised in #637 - koinsight is a great alternative, though it can't sync into grimmory at the moment. There are two possible ways I can see:

1. Adapt the koinsights API for grimmory, so grimmory can be used as a koinsights server, syncing highlights and reading stats

I feel this would be a significantly heavier lift but would mean there are no other dependencies for grimmory and koreader can be pointed at grimmory for opds, page sync and status sync. Clean, one-place solution.

2. Add a feature to grimmory to sync from koinsights.

The API seems relatively straightforward to pull from. Once configured, each book could have a sync button that pulls the relevant highlights and reading sessions from koinsight (I'm assuming, based on a cursory traversal of the codebase). The upside is that koinsight takes care of the heavy lifting w.r.t syncing koreader and normalizing the data. It also means that you can sync the hightlights to other places (like I do for Obsidian). The downside is that you're running another, separate container. The feature would also be dependent on another project.

While I work predominantly with Python and C++, I'd be happy to help contribute either approach to Grimmory. I'd like to hear from the maintainers which approach they'd favour before diving deeper into this.

[ThisIsBenny]

Koinsight isn't to "activate" developed at the moment:

[...]I've struggled to find time and motivation to work on the project due to some personal reasons, but I do aim to at least maintain it.[...]"
(https://github.com/GeorgeSG/KoInsight/releases/tag/v0.1.4).

There are not that much changes / releases the last months. The maintainer is still supporting it by reviewing MRs, but it think an independent plugin + api make more sense.

[balazs-szucs]

Hi,

the plan unchanged, we still want to get WT's code into upstream, however due to it's size, and other priorities this has not happened. Apologies for the delays on this, we did try to focus/prioritize enhancements that are important; performance, lot of bugfixes and alike, i am also a bit bummed out this hasn't made the cut.

[ScyllPoesis]

No worries! I think merging in WT's code would be my first pick for this issue as well, so I'm glad to hear it's still on the table. I've been watching the progress and you guys definitely have had your hands full with all the bugfixes and cleanup, so no one can say you're not working on it. Looking forward to seeing it all come together.

[beedaddy]

I think there are still some people (me included) on WT's custom "KOReader" image. Back then (in the BookLore days), in the firm belief that the PR would soon be merged. I would love to see at least this part upstream. Until then, I can't switch to Grimmory. 😔