Access adobe digital editions from the command line - command-line

I'm looking to create a script for my 80-year old grandmother that downloads the books she needs, and converts them using the command-line version of Calibre, to kindle format so she can read them on her kindle. She gets a lot of her books from a service in the form of Adobe .epub books. AFAIK, none of these books have DRM on them prior to being converted, so let me be clear - I'm not asking how to strip DRM from an ebook.
What I am asking is whether there is a way to programmatically (from the command line is fine if Adobe Digital Editions supports CL args) use the ticket file to request a book from the library, and download it, in .epub form, to the local hard drive. I simply don't want my grandmother to have to go through all of the unneeded screens in Adobe Digital Editions' interface - she gets confused easily, and the interface tends to be overwhelming for her. I simply want to write a function (it can be a system() call to a command... that's fine) that will allow her to take a file received from the library or digital service and automatically retrieve the proper .epub file.
I have all of the other steps ready to go... I just can't find any way to retrieve the book from the service without using the DE interface.
Any suggestions?

Check this S.O. posting, I know it will help ;-)
pdf-adobe-digital-edition

Related

How to get serverside file uploading progress in Perfect

I'm trying to create a web page using Perfect(perfect.org), Where users will browse and upload files. Can anyone tell me how can I get the progress of file upload?
perfect.org-fileUploads
Refer above link and Do as-usual concept following in HTML-JS-PHP or HTML-JS-JSP or other programming
In other words
you can receive response status in percentage from server-side and display it to client or put loder while uploading the file
Thank you
Before an official solution released from PerfectlySoft Inc. for this feature request, you could try splitting the file into small pieces and upload them one by one, then merge them back to the server - since there is no such an industrial standard to apply, all other web servers either provide different solutions or simply stay away from it.

Powershell method of downloading file from a website with a changing URL?

I have been given a task that involves downloading a single file every day from a website. Let's call it "https://test.example.com". I have credentials that allow me to login to the site, where a Flash interface then presents the files that are available for download. After the file is downloaded, it is then processed in a variety of ways. I have already put together the Powershell that handles all that, I am just having a hard time with automating the actual download of the file.
I used the Flash interface to download a few files while watching the network activity, and found that it is actually pulling the file from this URL:
https://test.example.com/link/EBDB7F67EF3B28XX99NCAD9920160423/file.zip
Therefore, I was able to put this together in order to automatically get the file via my PS script:
$url = 'https://test.example.com/link/EBDB7F67EF3B28XX99NCAD9920160423/file.zip'
$output = "C:\Downloads\file.zip"
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $url -OutFile $output
However, the long string of numbers in the URL changes every day. The only discernible pattern I can find is that the last eight digits are always the date on which that particular file is posted.
Is there a good way to approach this? I've been experimenting with wildcards and patterns, as well as checking the HTML for elements that I can filter, but I am having a hard time finding the correct solution.
This is very hard to automate. You can't drive Flash from the script unless it is specifically designed for that. As I see it now your only options are:
Contact site devs if possible, maybe they can give you a details on function that generates link. This gives me an idea - perhaps you can reverse engineer Flash code to find that function details yourself. Use flash decompiler for this.
Simulate the user browsing the flash site. This can be done in one of the following ways:
Autohotkey - you can record mouse clicking relative to the browser window and execute the script again. Unless flash interface is too dynamic and unpredictive it will work.
Sikuli - another automation language which relies on picture segment recognition.
All above 2.* methods produce fragile automation code as they depend on browser settings (zoom, theme) and even OS settings. For this reason you need to dedicate one machine for that in all probability (virtual machine ofc). Decompiling flash code and re-implementing the url generting code in powershell will make it a reliable 100%.
As somebody said in comments this is not a powershell queestion but browser automation question.

Openoffice Writer macro that uploads current file to a web service on save

I want to know if this is doable and get some hints about how to achieve this.
I guess at least it would need a confirmation dialog to run the (possibly evil) macro.
I want to produce an OpenOffice document that will upload itself on save to a hardcoded URL.
Is it possible?
What are the rough steps to achieve this?
My guess is:
bind a macro to the save event
have that macro get the current file binary data
have it post this data to a URL
but before researching about how to do this I need to know if this can be done in the first place.
I don't believe you need a macro to do this, instead depending on your OS you can map a FTP or other type of protocol remotely.
For example in windows you can "Map" a FTP as a drive and this would do exactly the same thing as your describing, you open the file from the FTP and upon saving it will then be written to the remote server. FTP is just an example here, there are other platforms you can use.
If you are at all interested in this method then following the instructions below, otherwise disregard.
Mapping a Network Drive in Windows Vista and 7.
Click on Windows start orb and then click on "computer".
Click on map a network drive.
Map a network drive will then open a new dialog box where you can click "connect to a website"
Simply follow that easy to use wizard and click add a new network location (Choose a custom network location)
Type in your FTP address, including username and password.
Finally name your network location to whatever you want.
Just a suggestion, I really don't think you need any macro unless you plan on distributing these files to other people then yes, but they would need to install that macro/plugin on their open office since there is no way to encode the document itself with such features as far as I know.

Is there a way to run a script on iOS?

I need to define a processing rule for web data in iOS and thought it would be a good idea to pull the processing rule as a script file from my server and execute it on the iOS device, since the web API I'm interacting with might change URLs or response syntax and I need to be able to fix such issues fast and cannot rely on pushing an update (takes forever).
I wanted to do it with a small JS file that is pulled from my server every once and a while, but unfortunately iOS doesn't include the JavaScriptCore framework.
Are there other options?
Apple developer agreement will not let you run a downloaded, interpreted script, on the device.
Your best bet is probably downloading a data structure (potentially in JSON format) and parse that and take some predefined actions in your client code based on that, rather than trying to execute the downloaded code directly.
You can let a UIWebView run a Javascript snippet, or you could use another scripting language like LUA (don't forget to add LUA for this). The real problem is: You are not allowed to download code from a webserver or somewhere else. Everything must either be already on the device, or calculated at runtime.
Depending on the information that you want, you could use an XML file that includes the new URLs and parse it, but I don't know if this fits your need.
You can compile JavaScriptCore into your app, evidently, and have it approved by Apple. However, as Mehrdad notes, any scripts run in the app must already be in the app at the time the app is reviewed.

Adding PDF to iBooks by code

I was recently asked if I could code a simple IPhone/IPad app that:
Checks an FTP server for changes to a PDF file (easy)
Downloads the lastest PDF (easy)
Adds or replace the file on iBooks (hmm...)
I have tried to find any code that deals with inserting/adding/updating files inside iBooks, but sadly there is very little on the subject. Is this even possible except manually through iTunes? My gut feeling says that it's just a matter of writing the file to a folder..
It makes sense if it were such an API. There are many companies that would like to keep their product portfolios up to date, or research manuals that (in theory at least) could benefit greatly from being updated automatically through an app.
Any help or comments are welcome.
My gut feeling says that it's just a
matter of writing the file to a
folder..
Unfortunately, this probably isn't the case. I'd imagine iBooks using some sort of database to keep track of books, rather than simple files.
There is a URL schema for iBooks, but it's undocumented, and nobody has found any methods that would update/replace a book (I don't know if any even exist): How do I launch iBooks e-reader programmatically on iPad?
If you feel this is something that would be beneficial to iBooks, you should consider filing a feature request on the Apple dev site.
UIDocumentInteractionController is your friend in this case