momijizukamori: (CODE CAT)
Sollux ([staff profile] momijizukamori) wrote2012-10-23 06:27 am

this is what happens when I forget to take my meds until six am

Throwing this out there while it's in my brain all fresh - someone on the xda-dev forums posted how to access the B&N Nook's annotations DB files, along with suggestions for auto-syncing them via Dropbox (basically a symlink from the user-accessible folders into the root folders). This is all well and good but I am a Huge Nerd and I desire MORE. So basically my rough draft goes something like this:

1) Figure out how to sync the file with my personal server automatically, along with automating import of the SQLite .db file into a server database (this maaaay get tricksy if only because the Nook appears to have some issues identifying what file it's pointing with sideloaded books, which is why annotations seem to vanish, but I'm willing to hack at it - manually tagging books an author when the Nook goes weird)

2) Something to take this database and generate slightly more human-parsable HTML pages of it - annotations and highlights sorted by book, with a separate (dynamically generated) page for each one so I can be fancy and link them and shit. Editing would be nice, but I'm willing to sacrifice that to 'have to do on commandline' - mostly it's that touch screen highlighting is kind of hit or miss so a lot of my highlights have clipped words.

3) MAKE PRETTY WEBPAGE YAY.


(2) is kind of my sticking point because I do know know how to write the things that glue databases and HTML-formatted content together. I know they exist! I know they are usually in PHP and Perl! But I could use some guidance, particularly on the 'okay we've pulled it out of the database, now how do we sent it for formatting?' part - I've worked a bit with straight-up SQL in pulling and pushing data in and out of databases, so I'm more familiar with that end of things.

Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?