Library book "path" attribute should not be needed in kiwix-serve --catalogOnly mode

[kelson42]

Incongruity introduced with #759

[veloman-yunkan]

Why is this considered an incongruity?

kiwix-serve derives the content-id for books (used to access them via the /content endpoint) from the ZIM filename. So if paths are not present in the library XML file fed to the catalog server it won't be able to generate preview links pointing to the content server. This may make sense in the --catalogOnly mode when --contentServerURL is not specified (in which case the book preview functionality is disabled). But is this the scenario you are concerned about?

[veloman-yunkan]

Note that there are three different ways of referring to a book

1. UUID
2. Book name
3. ZIM name

The latter two can lead to some confusion. Book name is used in some endpoints and/or filters, and ZIM name in others. By not having access to the ZIM file paths we lose the possibility to generate the ZIM name.

[kelson42]

Why is this considered an incongruity?

kiwix-serve derives the content-id for books (used to access them via the /content endpoint) from the ZIM filename.

This is the core problem and this is already tracked since years in other issues. I have only open this issue to remember one bad consequence of this architectural weakness.