Data format

pybrary stores every book as a single row in a SQLite database named library.db at the repository root. The database is handled by SQLAlchemy and keeps the catalogue in sync automatically whenever the application saves.

Columns

Column	Type	Description
id	int	Auto-incrementing primary key.
name	text	Book title.
author	text	Author of the book.
genre	text	Genre / category.
copies_total	int	Total physical copies owned.
copies_avail	int	Copies currently available to borrow.
reads	int	Cumulative number of borrows.

Books are exposed to the application as Python objects; to inspect the raw database use any SQLite client:

sqlite3 library.db "SELECT name, author, genre FROM books;"

Migrating from the legacy CSV format

Older pybrary versions stored the catalogue in a plain library.csv. That format is still supported as an import format: on startup an empty database is seeded from library.csv automatically, or explicitly with:

pybrary --db my-library.db --import-csv my-library.csv

Notes

• Records may be added, edited, borrowed, returned or deleted through the TUI and the changes are written back to library.db on save or exit.
• copies_avail is clamped to the range [0, copies_total] when a record is loaded.
• The database is portable: copy library.db anywhere and every record travels with it.