Novela

Novela is a self-hosted web application for managing and reading a personal digital library. It supports EPUB, PDF, and CBR/CBZ, with metadata editing, reading progress tracking, and Dropbox backups.

What Novela Provides

• Library import and indexing for EPUB/PDF/CBR/CBZ
• Home dashboard with continue reading and unread/read sections
• Reader support for EPUB, PDF, and comics (CBR/CBZ)
• Metadata editing (title, author, publisher, series, volume, tags, genres)
• New review workflow with list/grid view, column toggles, and bulk actions
• Reading analytics/statistics dashboard
• Dropbox backup with:
  • versioned snapshots
  • object deduplication
  • retention policy
  • scheduled background runs

Tech Stack

• FastAPI
• Jinja2 templates + vanilla JavaScript
• PostgreSQL 16
• Docker / Docker Compose style deployment

Repository Layout

• containers/novela/ - application code (routers, templates, static assets, migrations)
• stack/ - deployment stack files and environment configuration
• docs/ - technical status and changelog documentation
• build-and-push.sh - helper script for container build/push

Quick Start (Development)

1. Configure environment values in stack/novela.env.
2. Start the stack using your preferred Docker workflow (Compose/Portainer stack).
3. Open the app and complete backup credential setup on /backup if needed.

Key Environment Variables

• POSTGRES_DB
• POSTGRES_USER
• POSTGRES_PASSWORD
• NOVELA_MASTER_KEY
• CONFIG_DIR
• LIBRARY_DIR (optional override)

Documentation

• Technical status: docs/TECHNICAL.md
• Develop changelog: docs/changelog-develop.md

Status

This repository is actively evolving. The develop documentation reflects implemented behavior in the current codebase.