solutions wanted Book catalog with ISBN web lookup

[jbrigham]

Hi everyone -

I want to build a FMP cross-platform solution for using a barcode scanner to create an inventory of a library full of books. I've looked at some of the non-Filemaker solutions (Delicious Library, Bookpedia, etc.) and they are pretty much exactly what I need, but I need it to be in Filemaker. So, I'd like to find something that has the basic functionality (read ISBN from barcode scanner, lookup relevant information from the web) but that I can also customize to our own needs.

Anyone have any ideas for sources?

Thanks much,

John

[acrunstadler]

I want to do the exact same thing. Have you gotten any leads on how to do get what you need with FileMaker?

[David McQueen]

The scanning is not a problem with FileMaker. It just deposits the text read into a text field.

Auto searching the sites could be a problem. I really do not know what is involved in generating URL's for the sites in qustion.

The question I really have is why? Bookpedia is $18.00 and Delicious Library is $40.00. You can't develop much for that.

[Fenton]

You first need to sign up for a free developer's access key at:

http://isbndb.com/data-intro.html

A URL to return xml for a simple ISBN request looks like (dev_key and ISBN being FileMaker fields)

http://isbndb.com/api/books.xml?access_key=" & dev_key & "&index1=isbn&value1=" & ISBN

The xml looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>



  

    

      Programming Web services with Perl

      

      Randy J. Ray and Pavel Kulchenko

      Farnham ; O'Reilly, 2002 printing, c2003.

    

  

Which can be imported into FileMaker using the attached xsl stylesheet file.

isbn_book_short.xsl.zip

[Fenton]

To see what the xml file looks like, on a Mac you can run a quick AppleScript in Script Editor, writing it to a file on your Desktop (this just has a hard-coded ISBN)

set dev_key to "your access key"

do shell script "curl 'http://isbndb.com/api/books.xml?access_key=" & dev_key & "&index1=isbn&value1=0596002068' > ~/Desktop/isbn_result.xml"

[jbrigham]

Thank you everyone for your responses. I'll need to learn a bit more about how to make these calls but it certainly looks very promising. Any ideas where I might find an example solution that already does something like this so I could see how it works?

The reason I need to do it in Filemaker is because the client already has several databases into which this would need to integrate.

Thanks much,

John

[comment]

Try this.

ISBN.zip

[jbrigham]

This is great, very helpful - thank you posting it. One question - why is there a global ISBN field? Wouldn't that information vary per record and act as the lookup field?

Thanks much

John

[comment]

What's happening here is not a lookup, but an import. You import an xml document that is prepared for you as a result of a http request. I don't see a way to make a request for more than one ISBN at a time, so if you had a table of ISBNs you would need to loop through them.

[jbrigham]

Thanks again, I understand now. It would be possible, however, to grab (via barcode scanner) the ISBN for any given book into a new record and then later loop through the Import process for each ISBN number, right?

[comment]

Yes, of course. It's only a demo, and there are a thousand ways it can be modified. The only important things here are how to calculate the URL for the request (from access key and ISBN), and how to import the resulting XML.

[Mike Wells]

Hello,

Extreme newbie here. I am doing a book cataloging database in FM as well as a way to learn how the prgram funtions. I have it set up to catalog my books and check them in and out, but I can't figure out how exactly to implement this file. I have linked to it through a script, but it only loads the data from the last lookup over and over. I am obviously leaving something simple out, I just don't know what it is. Right now, I have the field I want to enter the ISBN in set to retrieve the data from the ISBN lookup file, but I want to be able to enter a record, put in the ISBN, have it look up the book, enter the data, and repeat with new info when I enter a new field. Any help would be greatly appreciated. ;)

[comment]

I hesitate here, because if you are "extreme newbie", you may not understand my answer.

As I said earlier, the file is a demo - you are not supposed to actually use it, but to learn from it. In your implementation, you need to enter the ISBN into a regular (i.e. not global) field, then do the import with the option "Update matching records…" turned on.

Again, this not something you want to undertake if you've only now started. I'd suggest you learn the basics first, and come back to this later.

[Mike Wells]

I'm in the process of training in FileMaker, and I am setting up the Book Catalog as a personal project to familiarize myself with what I am learning.

Now that I understand how I need to implement it, I can try and set up the ISBN lookup. My boss will be very impressed if I pull this off within the first 3 or 4 training sessions.

Thanks!