|
API Description: Data Collections
The data available through ISBNdb.com's remote access API are organized
into multiple collections.
Each collection typically represents a single type of data and various
ways of referencing it -- for instance you can look at at a collection
of books, collection of publishers, subjects, etc. If you want to get
a list of books on a given subject -- you use "books" collection and
specify your subject in variables. On the other hand, if you want to
get a list of subjects matching a keyword -- you use "subjects"
collection, as subject is the type of data you are interested in.
Each data collection is represented by a top-level URL for which you
supply request variables to get a response. For instance, for the books
collection the top URL is "http://isbndb.com/api/books.xml", for subject the
top URL is "http://isbndb.com/api/subjects.xml", etc.
Uniform collection parameters
Besides common parameters described in the previous section most
collections accept a set of parameters that define a subset of the data
you are interested in. These parameters are:
- index1
- Defines the type of search you are performing - title, isbn, etc.
- value1
- Your supplied value for the search. For instance if you search on
ISBN then you would set 'value1' to the ISBN you want.
- opcode1
- Optional qualifier for the search you do. Usually it defaults to
some reasonable value depending on 'index1' you use. See specific
collections and their 'index1' values for details.
Supported Data Collections
- Books
- Getting information about books.
- Subjects
- Getting information about book subjects.
- Categories
- Getting information about book categories.
- Authors
- Getting information about book authors.
- Publishers
- Getting information about book publishers.
|
