any APIs on the horizon for adding/editing books?

I'm interested in being able to add books or edit fields like read_date via the API.

This would require some evolution in the APIs to include the LT user as an element.

Are you moving in this direction?

This would open up a host of options including desktop UPC scanning.

-jeff

We are heading in that direction. We'll be adding new API methods as we (I) get them finished and tested. I'm trying to get another couple out by the end of this week.

Modifying data will be at least a month away because I'm going to have to write the authentication code and APIs.

Could you use something like OAuth for the authentication?

- Jeremy

Possibly. Though as of right now it will work pretty much like the Flickr and Facebook APIs.

That may work if you don't keep track of which edition you have, but if you don't blank out the ISBN, Publication, and all the other fields that pertain to a particular edition, then it wouldn't be right to use the copies field (that is unless they actually are the exact same edition).

For me, an API to add books without an ISBN number from an existing data source is definitely a priority before I'd consider moving my data to LibraryThing.

It is planned. I can't tell you when quite yet but it is certainly planned. I'm hoping in the next month or two but it depends on the timing of a couple of other projects.

>6 barrycaruth:,7 Just chiming it to say I would love that feature enormously as well. I've already entered all my books with ISBNs and they just flew by. Now I'm at the meat of my collection though: older books with no ISBNs. And I want to be sure to enter the data correctly, not just fine a close enough book with the search tool and fix it later. I'm pretty anal about getting all the fields right, and its a lot of work with the adding tool as is. An API for this would be really awesome. Given that you mention it is probably going to be coming along, I guess I can start typing in my data in a flat file now, and massage it with perl later to whatever format your API will accept.

Thanks for the update, conceptDawg, to let us know this is planned.

Is this any closer on the roadmap? Thanks!

I work with NC State Archives, and we are considering using Library Thing to provide access to our smaller collection of published materials.

We need to be able to enter items into LibraryThing, then export those items to CSV, add subject terms to the items by cross referencing (i.e., matching by title) from an existing non MARC-based catalog.

Is there anyway to do a full, lossless transfer from LibraryThing to csv and then back into LibraryThing?

Will this new API solve this problem?

I haven't had a chance to work on any new API functions due to the craziness that is our current server load. Hopefully I'll be able to offer some new APIs soon.

The current road-map for APIs looks like this:
1. Getting info for Local venues and events
2. Getting info for individual catalogs
3. Modifying users' book info

We have reasons for that order, both technical and business related.

Thanks for keeping this on your radar conceptDawg - I really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to moving my collection onto LibraryThing when I can script non-ISBN book imports.

Any updates on this?

Thanks!

I've worked on some new APIs (Local) but no new ones have been released. Mostly because I'm concentrating on getting collections out the door ASAP.

Check out the Twitter feature. It could easily be turned into an adding API.

#12 explicitly said "non-ISBN book". Doesn't the Twitter thing use ISBNs? What about other unique ids, such as OCLC or Google Books?

I would welcome a one-click import of Google Books My library into an LT collection, which would be straightforward (on the user end) given such a scheme.

The Twitter thing woks by titles. It only searches Amazon though.

Our Twitter feature does titles and ISBNs, but the current obstacle would be that it does not add anything that doesn't return a search hit from Amazon.com. This would make it impossible to add books that aren't on Amazon's US site at the moment, but given some other feedback we may need to open this up to different default searches for our non-US users.

The Twitter feature sounds like a possibility if it could be opened up beyond Amazon.com but unfortunately that won't help with the bulk of my non-ISBN books which are editions too old to be listed on most online retailers.

Any updates here?

Now that (wonderful) collections are here, it would be really nice to be able to move my books into and out of collections through an API.

The idea being that I can use Delicious Library on the mac to drag books onto bookshelves (or to make auto-bookshelves) and then synch the results to LT.

Thanks T.

I just don't see any other uses for it, seriously. Even if we have a sort of "internal API" for it, exposing it requires work, and I'm just not sure that there's any common use-case, is there?

Synching with LT would be accomplished through importing with the synch option. Have you found that doens't work?

Thanks for the swift reply and apologies for the slowness of mine. Yes import with synch would work fine, and tags can do most of what I want, but it would be nice to be able to add a collections column too, and then say "Replace collection with imported info".

But perhaps there already is a way to move all books with a certain set of tags into a collection...

T.

Indeed there is. On the tag page, hover over a tag and click on edit on the bottom of the box. At the bottom of that box is a line that starts with "Change collections..." which is a link. Click on that and voila!

And you can also do it by selecting the books with the given tag on your Your Books tag and using Power Edit (the lightning icon) on those books.

I'm hoping to see a new function that would allow me to edit an existing item in my catalog, specifically to add tags and private comments. Is something like this coming in the near future?

I'd like my Firefox extension to be "collections-aware" if that winds up being possible. I have no idea how to code it, but it would be fun to work on.

Are we any nearer getting an API for adding/deleting books?

I ask because I'm interested in creating an Android app to manage my library.

In the meantime is it possible to login using an HttpClient object to process the request? I've tried this and, despite seeing my username in the cookie_userid I'm still bounced to the book's page when I submit the add request.

Anyone else interested in Android development in this group?

Tony

I am interested in some Android Dev also. What I'm looking for is a way to search my library by ISBN. I like to prowl the used books in thrift shops and I would love to be able to check my library before I buy books (I've donated back too many duplicates to want to do it any more :D )

Obviously I would like to extend that to add the book right away, but until that get's opened up I'll live with just searching.

Same as Khelmar I too would like to build an android app to browse & search my own library when in the bookstore. I know of the mobile version of LT but an android app would be nicer.
It wouldn't even be that hard to build a browser if there was some nice REST-API available that could paginate the search result so you could query your collection with for example result "10-20" with search order "title".