Developers' Network Blog

In this monthly update we add a few new features:

- support paging of large result by two parameters: "startIndex" and "count".

xISBN by default returns first 1000 matched ISBNs, however there are a few works with more than 1000 matches (e.g. Bible), in that case, the remaining ISBNs can be fetched by the paging method. We use "startIndex" and "count" parameters to page the result. The same technique can be used if the client desired less than 1000 records in response. The definition of startIndex and count is same as OpenSearch Specification. To do a paging request:

http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/isbn/9789574760442?method=getEditions&startIndex=1&count=2

- support two new fields: city (city of publication) and lccn (Library of Congress Control Number),e.g.

http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/isbn/2841770893?fl=city,lccn

LCCN can be considered a more significant feature as it allows mapping of
identifiers.

- author field now use all author name

http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/isbn/2841770893?fl=author

-- support serialization to csv format (UTF-8 encoding)
http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/isbn/2841770893?format=csv&fl=*

-- xISBN service now covers 16,662,967 ISBNs and 13,308,218 FRBR groups, for more information, please check
http://xisbn.worldcat.org/xisbnadmin/doc/stat.htm

We added a few more features in xISBN service recently:

- JSON callback

JSON output is native JavaScript, and callbacks are particularly useful for use with web service requests in client-side JavaScript. see:

http://xisbn.worldcat.org/xisbnadmin/doc/api.htm#callback

- tab-delimited format dissemination

This is useful if you need to do a unix cut:

$ curl "http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/isbn/0596002815?method=getEditions&fl=title,year&format=txt" | cut -f 2

- a demo of integrating Googlebooks with xISBN JSON callback

http://xisbn.worldcat.org/xisbndemo/index.htm

We recently released the xOCLCNUM service in

http://xisbn.worldcat.org/xisbnadmin/xoclcnum/index.htm

In the early design of xISBN service, we didn't think through all requirement for future services, so it's bit awkward that we actually use a different XML schema/namespace for xOCLCNUM service, such as:

<rsp xmlns="http://worldcat.org/xid/oclcnum/" stat="ok">
<oclcnum isbn="9780596002817" lccn="2004273129">55847258</oclcnum>
</rsp>

However, if you prefer to use any other dissemination format, such as text or json distribution, we actually kept a consistent schema:

http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/isbn/0596002815
?method=getMetadata&format=python&fl=isbn,oclcnum

http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/oclcnum/177669176
?method=getMetadata&format=python&fl=isbn,oclcnum

So any code written for xISBN should be applicable to xOCLCNUM as well if you are not using XML dissemination, otherwise you may need a little (I hope) adjustments.

Thanks for great suggestion by Tod Matola in OCLC, we are introducing an OCLCNUM normalization service as part of xOCLCNUM.

-- xOCLCNUM service now accepts different variants of an OCLCNUM, and always return OCLCNUM in same flavor, such as:

http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/oclcnum/ocm55847258?method=getEditions&format=xml&fl=lccn,isbn

--add a new method to generate different variants of an OCLCNUM.

http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/oclcnum/55847258?method=getVariants&format=xml

For more information, please check

http://xisbn.worldcat.org/xisbnadmin/xoclcnum/api.htm#getvariants