LibriVox API Discussion Thread

Comments about LibriVox? Suggestions to improve things? News?
michaelmuenzer
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Joined: March 13th, 2013, 9:27 am

Post by michaelmuenzer »

Hello!
Thx for the great work so far ;), I am currently developing an Android-app which is using the new API and have some minor changes that would help me to get stuff parsed to the screen as fast as possible ;).

Is it possible to include another two fields, one that gives a link to the album-cover in the xml (<url_cover>) and a second that includes the link to the playlist (<url_playlist>http://archive.org/download/avenger_1207_librivox/avenger_1207_librivox_64kb.m3u</url_playlist>)?

It also seems that genres are not working so far, is this going to be included in the next updates?

It also seems that the old API (http://librivox.org/newcatalog/latestworks.xml?offset=0&limit=50) is not working since today. Will it be up again or does the new one now totally replace it?

Michael
Last edited by michaelmuenzer on September 6th, 2013, 8:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
RuthieG
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Post by RuthieG »

I have no answer for you at the moment - there's a lot of work still going on, so please be patient. I think it unlikely, if the old API has already ceased functioning, that it will be brought into service again, but that is merely my conjecture.

Ruth
My LV catalogue page | RuthieG's CataBlog of recordings | Tweet: @RuthGolding
michaelmuenzer
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Joined: March 13th, 2013, 9:27 am

Post by michaelmuenzer »

Ok thx, just noted two more things ;)

The readers-tag (<readers>) is also not yet present and the download-link of the tag <url_zip_file> seems not to be valid.
For instance "http://www.archive.org/download/Count of Monte Cristo_47_librivox_/Count of Monte Cristo_47_librivox_64kb_mp3.zip" is returned where the valid url seems to be "http://archive.org/download/countofmontecristo_1303_librivox/countofmontecristo_1303_librivox_64kb_mp3.zip"

Michael
RuthieG
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Post by RuthieG »

Reported, thank you

Ruth
My LV catalogue page | RuthieG's CataBlog of recordings | Tweet: @RuthGolding
cafemarvin
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Joined: September 10th, 2013, 3:31 pm

Post by cafemarvin »

Hello,

This is my first time on this forum. I have been working on an iPad app with the old API until a few days ago when the old API is no longer available. I have since switched to the new API which seems to work well and with much cleaner XML syntax.

I would also like to make a request for a URL link to the book cover photo, to be included in the new API.

Potential bug: I have also tried to use the "fields={title,genres,authors}" option of the new API, and the result came back without the data for "genres" and I can only obtain "genres" with the "extended=1" option.

Thanks for all the good work with Librivox.

Marvin
RuthieG
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Post by RuthieG »

The API is no longer on the dev server. Please see information on the new API at http://librivox.org/api/info

Ruth
My LV catalogue page | RuthieG's CataBlog of recordings | Tweet: @RuthGolding
tbook
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Joined: May 12th, 2012, 7:01 am

Post by tbook »

Thanks! I'll try it out! Since the status is "released," I am assuming that we can expect it to stay the same for now.
Working on iOS and Android apps for LibriVox. You can see the comments from the apps on our web site: LibriVox Audio Books
knotyouraveragejo
LibriVox Admin Team
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Post by knotyouraveragejo »

If there are any critical fields missing, do let us know!
Jo
tbook
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Joined: May 12th, 2012, 7:01 am

Post by tbook »

The main thing that it seems to lack from my point of view is a good way to get a listing of the most recent books. The "since" field is nice, and I can probably build something to work with that, but I don't see a way to request, for example, the 5 most recent books.

Also, I suppose that the RSS feeds haven't changed? Lots of them were missing reader / cover image information. I didn't look thoroughly to see if that had been added.
Working on iOS and Android apps for LibriVox. You can see the comments from the apps on our web site: LibriVox Audio Books
michaelmuenzer
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Joined: March 13th, 2013, 9:27 am

Post by michaelmuenzer »

Agree with that, it is almost impossible to get the most-recent books. Would be nice if the list is either sorted by date, an additional completion-field is added or I could specifiy the order with an additional parameter (&order="date-asc"). When thinking about different languages, maybe an additional query-parameter like &language="french" would also be convenient.

Is it also possible to add a field with the size (in bytes) of the zip-file to the audiobook-xml? (url_zip_size?)

I just noted that the fields-parameter is not working for http://librivox.org/api/feed/audiobooks/id/1939. Would also be good to reduce unnecessary information.
Last edited by michaelmuenzer on September 14th, 2013, 12:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
ekzemplaro
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Post by ekzemplaro »

Hello Jo san,
knotyouraveragejo wrote:If there are any critical fields missing, do let us know!
I think the following information should be included.

Catalog date:
Read by:
Book Coordinator:
Meta Coordinator
Proof Listener:

Cheers,
Masa
annise
LibriVox Admin Team
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Post by annise »

I'm not sure any of those need to be included for the creation of apps though ? I suspect they woould be included in the removal of unwanted information request

Anne
cafemarvin
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Post by cafemarvin »

Hello,

I would love to have a field to indicate the popularity of a book as 'the number of times this book has been read.'

Alternately, this field could be normalized on some sort of scale, for example, from 0..100 -- a book could be on the on the top 20% most read.

Thanks,

Marvin
annise
LibriVox Admin Team
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Post by annise »

That you will not get - we do not rate our books or our readers and never will :D

Anne
tbook
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Post by tbook »

Regarding the "Reader" information, anyhow, I think it would be great for apps - people ask me for that feature all the time. Right now, I think it is supposed to be included in the chapter data in the RSS feeds, which is fine, as many books have multiple readers. The problem is, for most of the books, the reader info is missing there. Of course, a field that gave the reader's name (for a solo work) or something like "Various" for a collaborative work would also be handy.
Working on iOS and Android apps for LibriVox. You can see the comments from the apps on our web site: LibriVox Audio Books
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