Index : What is QJaffis? · First Things First · Doing a Fanfiction.Net Search · Global Filters · Skeletons · Downloading Fanfics and Updating Them · Fimfiction.Net · An Archive of Our Own

What is QJaffis?

QJaffis is a program I've written that is intended to help in looking for and downloading fanfics. It a modified version (partly re-written using Qt) of Jaffis, which is a successor to an earlier program that I first started when the search engine for Fanfiction.Net was completely useless.

The core functions of QJaffis are search tools for Fanfiction.Net, Fimfiction.Net, and Archive of Our Own. You can specify searches in the program, and QJaffis will then download the search result pages (in order) in the selected categories, filter them according to filters that the user picks, optionally sorts them into result categories, and displays them in the results. You can save the search, and for Fanfiction.Net, the results, and have the program produce formatted HTML files of the results.

Although the search engines and filters for these sites work fairly well, QJaffis is far more flexible and sophisticated. For exapmle, Fanfiction.Net does not allow looking for keywords in the title or summary at the same time, can only filter by including or excluding one genre (whereas in QJaffis, you can specify any number of genres to include, exclude, or ignore), cannot search by looking at the character info, and will not allow you search in more than one specific category, all of which can be done by QJaffis. QJaffis has several more filtering options, and the result categories means you can do multiple searches on the same category at the same time, and save the results for browsing

In addition to the search tools, QJaffis currently also includes:

• A download tool for fetching Fanfics from several (currently 5) fanfiction sites for offline reading.
• An update tool for the downloaded fanfics which can be used to update all the downloaded fanfics in a particular directory.
• A Search engine tool for Fimfiction.Net groups.
• A 'sync' tool to make the contents of a target directory match a source directory.

Please keep in mind this program was (and is being) developed primarily for personal use, and thus cannot really be considered to be professional quality software. It works, but it is somewhat buggy, and will probably crash if the user does something unanticipated. Also, the input data — websites — is something that the program has no control over. If the the formatting for the targeted webpages changes, the program will likely crash, and a revised version will have to be produced.

First Things First

Before doing any searches or downloads with QJaffis, there are 2 main things that should be done.

Set up the directories

From the Tools menu, pick the option called Default Directories. This will pop up the dialog you see on the right.

The most important thing there is the list of directories, which specifies the default directory for 6 specific things:

1. Google Results : (currenty unused) Where formatted HTML results of Google searches will be placed.
2. Google Save Files : (currenty unused) When a Google search is saved, the default directory where the file will be saved is this one.
3. Fanfic Search Results Where the HTML results of searches will be placed.
4. Fanfic Search Save Files : When a search or a Fanfiction.Net results collection is saved, the default directory (where the file will go to) is this one.
5. Downloaded Fanfics : When you download a fanfic, by default, the fic will go here (or in a subdirectory).
6. Default Open Directory : When you want to open a saved search or a results file, the file open starts from this directory.
7. Source Directory for Sync : For the 'sync' tool, the default source directory is this one..
8. Target Directory for Sync : For the 'sync' tool, the default target directory (whose contents will be made to match the source directory) will be this one.

• Default filesize hint : When downloading fanfics, sometimes packing all parts into a single file can result in a file that inconveniently large — browsers can sometimes freeze for minute or so while rendering such a large amount of text, especially if you are trying to view the fic on a old PDA or something similar. So this number is a hint as to the maximum file size QJaffis should have for a downloaded fic. Anything requiring more will end up as multiple files.
• Do Logging : Not useful for users, but rather for me. QJaffis currently outputs many logging statements by default (something to fix later on), but if this checkbox is checked, QJaffis will log much more. If QJaffis crashes, I can examine the files to try and figure out where and why the crash occurred.

Once done, click on the Save and Close Button. The information is saved to (and loaded from) the globalvals.dat when QJaffis closes (and starts).

Get Category information

For a Fanfiction.Net search, or an Archive of Our Own search, you have the pick the categories to look in. Fanfiction.Net has 9 sections, which often contain hundreds of categories each, and for far more complexity, you have the crossovers, where a popular show alone can have hundreds of sections for crossover fics. These categories are added to on a regular basis. To make sure the listings of categories to search in are reasonably up to date, pick Download FFN Categories from the Tools menu.

This brings up the dialog you see to the right. Click the Start button to start downloading the Category info. This could take quite a while. This should also be repeated now and then before doing a search because Categories are always being added. To speed things up, you can check the Update the FFN Categories if possible Checkbox. If you have already downloaded (and saved) the FFN Category data, this will cause the downloader to skip downloading crossover categories that seem to have not changed (this is theoretically imperfect, but good enough most of the time).

Fimfiction.Net, as a one-fandom site, does not have categories. However, it does have a vast array of character tags, genre tags, and other things which can be used in the search, so you should use Tools and then Fetch FIM Tags from the menu to get that information.

Index : What is QJaffis? · First Things First · Doing a Fanfiction.Net Search · Global Filters · Skeletons · Downloading Fanfics and Updating Them · Fimfiction.Net · An Archive of Our Own