Google book API info

[ZooeyMiller]

We're going to need to look into book apis to get information about books for the library app, so we can track our progress here.

[finnhodgkin]

Having a look at Google Books currently. It's limited to 1000 requests per day / 100 per 100 seconds.

Not sure how relevant the info is yet, because the signup process is pretty tedious.

[finnhodgkin]

It has pretty great search functionality including searching by ISBN :+1:

If found this old gem so it should be good for our purposes:

[finnhodgkin]

The results come back in the following format:

"kind": "books#volumes",
    "totalItems": 417,
    "items": [
        {
            "kind": "books#volume",
            "id": "0I0CDX7WYjQC",
            "etag": "eiYgFNfMIoM",
            "selfLink": "https://www.googleapis.com/books/v1/volumes/0I0CDX7WYjQC",
            "volumeInfo": {
                "title": "Head first",
                "authors": [
                    "Mike Dion"
                ],
                "publishedDate": "2001",
                "industryIdentifiers": [
                    {
                        "type": "ISBN_10",
                        "identifier": "0673625796"
                    },
                    {
                        "type": "ISBN_13",
                        "identifier": "9780673625793"
                    }
                ],
                "readingModes": {
                    "text": false,
                    "image": false
                },
                "pageCount": 16,
                "printType": "BOOK",
                "categories": [
                    "Sports & Recreation"
                ],
                "maturityRating": "NOT_MATURE",
                "allowAnonLogging": false,
                "contentVersion": "preview-1.0.0",
                "imageLinks": {
                    "smallThumbnail": "http://books.google.com/books/content?id=0I0CDX7WYjQC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=5&source=gbs_api",
                    "thumbnail": "http://books.google.com/books/content?id=0I0CDX7WYjQC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&source=gbs_api"
                },
                "language": "en",
                "previewLink": "http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0I0CDX7WYjQC&q=intitle:Head+First&dq=intitle:Head+First&hl=&cd=1&source=gbs_api",
                "infoLink": "http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0I0CDX7WYjQC&dq=intitle:Head+First&hl=&source=gbs_api",
                "canonicalVolumeLink": "https://books.google.com/books/about/Head_first.html?hl=&id=0I0CDX7WYjQC"
            },
            "saleInfo": {
                "country": "GB",
                "saleability": "NOT_FOR_SALE",
                "isEbook": false
            },
            "accessInfo": {
                "country": "GB",
                "viewability": "NO_PAGES",
                "embeddable": false,
                "publicDomain": false,
                "textToSpeechPermission": "ALLOWED",
                "epub": {
                    "isAvailable": false
                },
                "pdf": {
                    "isAvailable": false
                },
                "webReaderLink": "http://play.google.com/books/reader?id=0I0CDX7WYjQC&hl=&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_api",
                "accessViewStatus": "NONE",
                "quoteSharingAllowed": false
            }
        }

[finnhodgkin]

Information on how to formulate API requests can be found here:

https://developers.google.com/books/docs/v1/using

Title search

https://www.googleapis.com/books/v1/volumes?q=intitle:Head%20First%20Ajax&key=API_KEY

ISBN search

https://www.googleapis.com/books/v1/volumes?q=isbn:133783379337&key=API_KEY

Author search

https://www.googleapis.com/books/v1/volumes?q=inauthor:Finn%20Hodgkin&key=API_KEY

[nelsonic]

This still appears to be the best book API. We need a quick walkthrough of getting the API keys and making API requests. This can either be via direct API Access using an API Key or using OAuth (where the person using the library authenticates and then the API requests they make are with their own token) ... given that we aren't expecting huge volumes of requests, the direct API route is preferable as it's simpler. 💭