@ig3/calibre-web v1.0.8

calibre-web.js

A simple web server that serves epub books from local Calibre databases.

Installation

$ npm install -g @ig3/calibre-web

Operation

The package provides an executable: calibre-web

Run this to start the server:

$ calibre-web

It listens on port 9000.

Browse to http://localhost:9000.

It can be started by systemd. For example:

[Unit]
Description=Calibre Web server

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
WorkingDirectory=/tmp
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
SyslogIdentifier=calibre-web
ExecStart=calibre-web

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

This can be installed as a system service or a per-user service. See the systemd documentation for details of setting up a service.

Configuration

Configuration may be stored in:

• /etc/calibre-web.json
• ~/.calibre-web.json

There are only two parameters:

• port: the port the server should listen on
• databases: an array of paths to Calibre databases to be read

The database paths are the paths of the directories containing the metadata.db files.

For example:

{
  "port": 1234,
  "databases": [
    "/usr/local/calibre",
    "/usr/share/calibre1",
    "/usr/share/calibre2"
  ]
}

Features

This only serves epub files. Other content of the Calibre database will be ignored.

The home page shows the cover image, title and author of each book, sorted by timestamp which, I think, is the time the book was added to Calibre.

It can read multiple Calibre databases but they must be local: the Calibre database is read from a file path.

Server load is fairly light. Just a node process running an Express website. When not processing a request it should not consume CPU.

It uses epub.js in the browser to display the book. Once the book is downloaded, there is no more load on the server as it is browsed.

System Requirements

I have only run this on Debian Linux. Not tested on other distributions or operating systems.

Requires Node.js. I am running it on v18.13.0. Not tested on other versions.

When idle, with a couple of Calibre libraries totaling over 500 books, top reports under 50K physical memory consumed and 0% CPU. It occupies a little under 25MB disk space.

Motivation

I used Calibre-web for a while but when I was setting up a new laptop I wanted something easier to install. I had been running a modified version of Calibre-web and wanted an all JavaScript implementation.

Changes

It's early days yet. Not published and too unsettled for changes to be noteworthy. See the git log and code for details.