Add Book API

[Anand Chitipothu]

It will be nice to expose the add book process through an API. It should take title, author, publisher, publish_date and ISBN and return key of the existing edition or new edition. The API can optionally take work_key or author_key.

POST /books/add.json

{"title": "Building Scalable Web Sites", "author": "Cal Henderson", "publisher": "O'Reilly", "publish_date": 2006", "isbn": "0596102356"}

Possible Responses:

{"status": "found", "key": "/books/OL17867197M"}
{"status": "created", "key": "/books/OL17867197M"}
{"status": "ambiguous", "works": ["/works/OL1W", "/works/OL2W"]}
{"status": "error", "reason": "insufficient input"}

Providing this API will allow library hackers to add books to Open Library from various different sources with ease.

[George (george-archive)]

I LOVE IT. Particularly because of the "insufficient input" error.

[George (george-archive)]

IMO, we should consider protecting the ability to Add Records using the API with an API key. It will be useful for us to connect new additions with a key in case things go wrong.

Have we considered using API Keys in the past?

[Anand Chitipothu (anandology)]

On 05-Feb-10, at 11:41 PM, George wrote:

> IMO, we should consider protecting the ability to Add Records using
> the
> API with an API key. It will be useful for us to connect new additions
> with a key in case things go wrong.
> Have we considered using API Keys in the past?

We are already protecting the write API with login and only registered
bots can use the write API. Marking a user as bot is a manual process
right now and I do it by setting a flag in the database.

We are already associating the change with the author who made the
change (bot in this case). What more will we get by using an API key?