A book that arrives as a file often has no identifier to ask about, only
a title and perhaps a name. `bibfetch search --title T [--author A]
[--limit N]` asks Open Library's index which books it has under those,
and Google Books only when Open Library has nothing, and prints one
record per candidate in the order the register gave them. From Rust,
`bibfetch::search(&agent, title, author, limit, attempts)`.
Each candidate is one edition. The index answers with works and, asked
for `editions.*`, names the edition of each that best matches; the ISBN,
publisher, language, year and cover come from that edition, the title,
authors, subjects and length from the work. The work's own ISBN list
mixes editions: the first War and Peace work lists four, while the
edition matched is a 1917 printing with none.
`id` is the first ISBN whose check digit agrees, in thirteen digits,
thirteen-digit entries taken first. A candidate with none is named by
the register's key: `olid` (OL…M for the edition, OL…W for the work when
no edition was named) or `googlebooks` (a volume id). Google's `OTHER`
shelfmarks are never read as ISBNs.
`cover_id` keeps the meaning it has in a lookup record: the edition's
own first cover, taken from `editions.cover_i` and only when the record
names that edition. The work's `cover_i` and `cover_edition_key` are not
asked for. A work with no edition named, and every Google Books
candidate, has none.
Open Library having nothing stands when Google Books is down; both down
is exit 69. Exit 0 a candidate, 1 none, 65 an empty title.
The retrying GET that lookups use is now `ask::get`, shared by both, and
no longer sleeps after its last attempt.
Review id 3 on catena#2.
P0: Record.cover_id came from the search index's cover_i, the cover
chosen for the whole work, and the index is asked first, so cover()
fell back to another edition's image (Penguin War and Peace,
9780140447934, got Standard Ebooks' Maude cover 12621906). cover_i is
no longer asked for or read; cover_id is the first positive id in the
edition record's covers, or None. An ISBN request that fails, as
opposed to a 404, now ends the fetch with that failure instead of
going on to the cover id.
Redirects go only over HTTPS on the standard port to
covers.openlibrary.org, archive.org or a host under archive.org, and
never to an address by number; the covers store the fetch began at is
still allowed.
The 1 KB size floor is gone. With default=false a missing cover is a
404, and the stand-in without it is a 43-byte GIF the media type check
refuses, so the floor could only drop real Small covers.
Covers.deadline (DEADLINE, two minutes) bounds a whole fetch: every
address, attempt, redirect, body and wait. It starts once the fetch
holds the process lock. The timeout test no longer times a span that
includes the lock wait.
`bibfetch::cover(&agent, isbn, cover_id, size)` asks Open Library's covers
store by the ISBN's thirteen-digit form, then its ten-digit form, then by a
cover id a lookup record named, and returns the image or `Ok(None)`. The
answer is checked before it is trusted: JPEG or PNG by content type and by
magic bytes, between 1 KB and 10 MB, at most three redirects, none of them
off HTTPS. One request at a time per process; a 429 or 503 is waited out
for its Retry-After, up to a minute.
`idnorm::isbn` converts between the two forms, and only for an ISBN whose
check digit agrees. Lookup records carry `cover_id` from the edition record
and the search index. The CLI gains `bibfetch cover <isbn> -o <file>`.
An ISBN is not a DOI. The body that assigns a DOI is the only one that has
it, so one register is the whole answer. A book's identifier is assigned by
its publisher and recorded by whoever gets round to it, and the record that
comes back is as often as not missing the thing the caller wanted: asked
about 9780199205592, OpenLibrary's edition record names *The First World
War* and the press that printed it, and nobody at all as its author, because
an edition record names its authors by key.
So an ISBN now has a chain rather than a register. The edition record first,
then OpenLibrary's own index — which answers with `author_name` filled in
and costs nothing — and Google Books last, because it answers anonymous
callers only until a daily quota runs out, after which it replies 429 to
everyone behind the same address, as it is doing here today.
The first complete answer wins, an incomplete one is kept in case nothing
better comes, and a register being down is a failure only when every
register is. `source` on the record says which one answered.
colophon comes with it: the imprint reader was taking `Oxford is a
registered trade mark of Oxford University Press` for a publisher and
`Oxford N`, off `Oxford New York`, for a place. A legal notice mentioning a
press is not the press, and a city is the city and not the first letter of
the next one.
funkpower