Ingestion Configuration

This section explains how to configure automatic book ingestion. These settings control how Bookcard monitors a folder for new books and processes them into your library.

Navigate to Settings > Admin > Configuration > Ingestion Configuration.

Basic Settings

• Watch Directory: The absolute path on the server where Bookcard should look for new files. Any supported book files dropped into this folder (or its subfolders) will be automatically processed.
• Enable Ingest: Master switch to turn the automatic ingestion process on or off.

Metadata Settings

• Enable Metadata Fetch: When enabled, Bookcard will attempt to fetch metadata (title, author, cover, description) from external providers for each ingested book.
• Merge Strategy: Controls how new metadata is combined with existing metadata or multiple results. - Merge Best: Smartly combines data, prioritizing longer descriptions and higher-resolution covers. - First Wins: Uses the first result found; ignores others. - Last Wins: Uses the last result found; overwrites previous ones. - Merge All: Combines all data (e.g., appends all found tags).
• Metadata Providers: Select which external services to query during ingestion (e.g., Google Books, Open Library). Deselecting providers can speed up ingestion if you don't need them.

Retry Settings

These settings control how the background worker handles failures (e.g., network issues during metadata fetch).

• Max Retry Attempts: How many times to retry a failed task before giving up.
• Backoff Seconds: How long to wait between retries (increases exponentially).
• Process Timeout: Maximum time (in seconds) allowed for processing a single book before it's considered "stuck" and cancelled.