API for displaying images of book covers

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I came across an interesting API from OpenLibrary (part of the Internet Archive) that can return the cover image for any book given an ISBN code or other identifier:

https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api/covers

Here’s an example of a simple macro for displaying book covers:

\define openlibrary-cover-url(value,key:"isbn",size:"M")  https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/$key$/$value$-$size$.jpg

<img src=<<openlibrary-cover-url value:"9780907563150" size:"L">>/>
  • The key can be ISBN, OCLC, LCCN, OLID or ID (case-insensitive)
  • The size can be one of S, M and L for small, medium and large

image
image1732×1536 127 KB

11 Likes
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Thanks @jeremyruston . This plugin from the old forum is also useful for openlibrary lookups.

http://ceebeetree.tiddlyspot.com/#%24%3A%2Fplugins%2Fceebee%2Fbookinfo

This plugin requests book details from the archive at https://openlibrary.org/ using the ISBN number of the book. The details are then recorded locally in a new tiddler that is named as per the book title and tagged “Books”

3 Likes
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5 posts were split to a new topic: Using a procedure with parameters as an img parameter does not work

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You can also use the function definition or only use text substitution:

<!-- text substitution only -->
\function openlibrary-cover-url(value,key:"isbn",size:"M")
[[https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/$(key)$/$(value)$-$(size)$.jpg]substitute[]]
\end

<!-- procedure substitution only -->

\procedure openlibrary-cover(value,key:"isbn",size:"M")
<img src=`https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/$(key)$/$(value)$-$(size)$.jpg`/>
\end

Function call: <img src=<<openlibrary-cover-url value:"9780907563150" size:"L">>/>

Procedure call: <<openlibrary-cover value:"9780907563150" size:"L">>
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Folks. Please test your code before posting. @XLBilly Yours was almost right, so I fixed and reformatted it for better readability.

@wiki_user Your code does not work. – Which tells me, that we desperately need to improve our text substitution documentation.

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Using a procedure with parameters as an img parameter does not work

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Thanks @Watt for the mention of my plugin…

I’ve been meaning to update this to make use of viewtemplate cascades and tm-http-request instead of using javascript to fetch the data… If there are any budding TW plugin creators out there that want to give this a go - I’m happy to help mentor them through it first :smiley:

Also FYI - there are some APIs for Album covers on MusicBrainz . Which are :

Cheers
CB