Adding books from iPhone using a barcode scanner

Hey All

I've been looking for a way to do this for a while now, and think I've finally got it right:

If you have the RedLaser app (free right now!) you can go to the following URL (from your iPhone) to make a custom "app" that will add books to your catalog based on the scanned ISBN.

http://www.redlaser.com/CustomApp.aspx?name=LT+Add&url=http://www.librarythi...

This emulates the text import option. It may not work the first time if you are not logged in, but should be ok after that.

Let me know how much your mileage varies, and if there's an easier way! (The "addbooks" API isn't compatible with RedLaser's url format, and only lets you search one source, whereas the text import let's you select two fall-backs)

Hi. I tried to reply earlier but this page is buggy in Firefox and there was no way to reply. So I posted a separate post. Here is what I said though;

I could not find a place to reply nor message the original poster. But in this thread... http://www.librarything.com/topic/95093#top
... "chrisandlina" discuss how to use the iPhone camera to scan bar codes and then get the book into your LibraryThing book list. I just wanted to say that so far it really works great and I'm excitedly waiting for the book to work it's way through the queue and show up on my book list. Once it successfully does that, I'll be a REAL fan of this new method.

:)

>2

It's a little off-topic, but LibraryThing doesn't really have a "reply". It has "post a message". You hit that. Convention has if you're responding, you include the post number.

I seem to remember a feature request that would have a "reply" that would include the post # automatically (I'd go an extra step and make it a link to the particular post). That feature suggestion, like many others, immediately triggered a lot of debate.

It worked! What a great trick! I love that I can now use my iPhone to scan books into my LibraryThing. Thanks for the tip. :)

Thanks, also, for the info Jonathan. :)
Cheers!

~Lauren

Glad it worked for you too! I'd still recommend a CueCat for cataloging a library from scratch, but for keeping your library topped up with the odd new book I reckon this method works pretty well.

Chris

This worked ok for me on fairly recent books, but in trying to scan in some older paperbacks, I get a "No Valid ISBNs Found" error. The ISBNs are valid and I can enter them manually and Librarything brings up the correct product. Any ideas?

Never mind. I found out that I was scanning the price bar code instead of the ISBN bar code. All is well, I am a dummy.

Hiya
I've been trying to get this to work but each time i scan i just get taken to a blank page... any ideas?
Thanks in advance

I also just get a blank page. It goes white and just sits there. Any clue?

I also get the white page on my iPhone after using the custom redlaser app... I'm logged into librarything on my iPhone (via Safari). Is there somewhere else to be logged in?

Aha! This custom app creates a URL link (the white page). You have to use the little "box & arrow" icon and select the option to open link in Safari. If you've already logged into LibraryThing on Safari it takes you to the import file page.

Anything for Android yet?

Note, the new update to RedLaser does not seem to have a way to get it to not look up the product info and just send the numbers to your email for import. I downloaded it today and had to revert back to the older version.

Yes, RedLaser now seems to be useless.

You can use another iPhone app called ZBar Barcode Reader (free). It allows you to create your own actions to be applied to each bar code, in addition to some pre-existing actions (one of which is a LibraryThing lookup that I used as a template). I created one called "Add to LibraryThing" which uses the following URL:

http://www.librarything.com/addbook/{ISBN-13}

If you aren't already logged in to LibraryThing, you will have to do so on the first instance.

You can also email yourself the items which are delivered in a csv file.

It's kludgy, and nowhere near as quick as using a CueCat (or using the old RedLaser app), but for just adding a few newly purchased books, it beats hauling out the laptop, plugging in CueCat....

the barcode scanner is only available for Iphone? Is there any barcode scanner available for Android? Mine is android system.

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World of Books and Barcode

LibraryThing Scanner. It works, but I find it unusably slow. YMMV - actually, MMMV, I haven't tried it on this phone or for years.