On 1/20/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 19/01/07, Anthony wikitech@inbox.org wrote:
If it were implemented in PHP, could then a lookup be done so one would only need to give the ISBN and page number, and the rest would be added automagically?
Where would we get the data from? Who's going to allow us to query this stuff at the rate we need it? Sure, we can cache it, but it still takes time to build up a good cache of titles.
Try librarything.com - they have an API and were keen recently for people to do mashups. Tell Tim I recommended it (-;
Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)
Coincidentally, I just finished the beta version of an extension, BookInformation, which enhances the output of Special:Booksources with a cute little box containing the title, author and publisher corresponding to the ISBN entered, where it exists. Works with Amazon Web Services right now, but has been coded to allow a number of possible providers to be supported. (Let me take the opportunity to thank the guys who shot in and provided translations for Finnish, Dutch, German and Indonesian within 10 minutes of committing it; if that's not bloody service, I don't know what is!)
There's no reason we couldn't enhance the citation extension with an auto-formatter for book/journal/similar references, *but* consider that to do this, we'd be pulling the format from a message as it is; so there isn't much benefit over using a template as is done at present.
Rob Church
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