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Introduction

Pathagar is a simple book server for schools where there is little or no internet. For more information, see this presentation by Prof. Sameer Verma. To get involved, please join our mailing list. For some of the history of the project, read this blogpost at OLPC-SF. Pathagar is built with the Django framework.

OPDS

It uses the OPDS spec.

Known good clients

We've successfully used the following OPDS clients with Pathagar.

  • Aldiko Book Reader on Android

Loading content

Once installed, Pathagar contains no books. You can upload individual books through the UI or you can bulk load them by following the instructions below.

From Internet Archive

You can download book files from Internet Archive. First you need to create a user and a bookmarks list. Once created, you'll fetch the book files on your bookmarks list with the fetch_ia_item command.

python manage.py fetch_ia_item --username=<your-username> --out=books.json

This can take a while depending on your internet connection and how many books you have on your bookmarks list. You might want to go grab a coffee and take a stretch break.

Once complete, you'll have a books.json file which you can use with the addbooks command.

python manage.py addbooks --json books.json

Learn more about the addbooks command below.

addbooks command

If you have your books already with metadata described in a file, use the addbooks command to import them into Pathagar.

JSON format

To add books from a JSON file:

python manage.py addbooks --json books.json

The format of the JSON file is like::

[
  {
    "book_path": "Path to ebook file",
    "cover_path": "Path to cover image",
    "a_title": "Title",
    "a_author": "Author",
    "a_status": "Published",
    "a_summary": "Description",
    "tags": "set, of, tags"
  },
  ...
]

You can add more fields. Please refer to the Book model.

CSV format

To add books from a CSV file:

python manage.py addbooks books.csv

The format of the CSV file is like:

"Path to ebook file","Title","Author","Description"

If you need to add more fields, please use the JSON file.

Dependencies

  • Python 2.7 or Python 3.5
  • libxml2-dev
  • libxslt-dev

Quickstart

Create a virtualenv and install the dependencies.

python3 -m venv venv_pathagar
. ./venv_pathagar/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.pip

In the Pathagar folder, copy local_settings.example.py to local_settings.py and edit it to suite your needs and environment.

Create the database schema and admin user.

python manage.py migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser

You will be asked for an admin username and password during this stage. This is only for development, so an easy to remember username and password is fine.

Start the development server.

python manage.py runserver

Open your web browser to http://localhost:8000/.

Click on "Add books" in the footer to start adding books. You will be asked for a username/password. This is the admin username/password you supplied while running createsuperuser.

Deployment

To run the server in a production environment, look at Django deployment docs.

pathagar.info also contains some common options for deploying Pathagar.