LibriVox API Discussion Thread

Comments about LibriVox? Suggestions to improve things? News?
dalewking
Posts: 13
Joined: September 1st, 2010, 6:03 am

Post by dalewking »

I thought to get the num_sections and using that to decide which way to parse it, but found out there are 5 books that report that they have 0 sections. 3 of them (12687, 12911, 66) actually do have no sections and they return the array instead of the map. There are 2 (76 and 473) that report they have no sections in num_sections but they actually do have multiple sections and they return the map instead of the array.
ScottLawton
Posts: 243
Joined: October 14th, 2011, 1:38 pm

Post by ScottLawton »

Good catch. (I got those 2 wrong.) It's possible that studying the DB itself (which outsiders can't do) or the various outputs (which we can do; including from archive.org) would yield a subtle issue that is fixable. i.e. something about the way the information is stored (or how/where some file is cached) can probably be changed so that the API would yield the same result here as it does for other books that have sections.
Cheers,

Scott
Aplt1.com - alternate LibriVox catalog that puts more info up front; optional iOS app
knotyouraveragejo
LibriVox Admin Team
Posts: 22067
Joined: November 18th, 2006, 4:37 pm

Post by knotyouraveragejo »

I've fixed the last two (76 & 473) to reflect the proper number of sections. Project 66 is not a real book. It's simply a catalog page that shows an index of the Grimm's fairy tales in German. https://librivox.org/maerchen-by-grimm-index/

As for the remaining two, one is an abandoned project with no sections. That database entry will eventually be reused for another project. I'm not quite sure what the other one is. It appears to be an incomplete project entry.
Jo
annise
LibriVox Admin Team
Posts: 38542
Joined: April 3rd, 2008, 3:55 am
Location: Melbourne,Australia

Post by annise »

not an API expert but shouldn't outsiders only be interested in completed projects? The 2 5 digit ones are not marked complete

Anne
ScottLawton
Posts: 243
Joined: October 14th, 2011, 1:38 pm

Post by ScottLawton »

knotyouraveragejo wrote: May 14th, 2018, 8:55 pm I've fixed the last two (76 & 473) to reflect the proper number of sections.
Thanks!
Cheers,

Scott
Aplt1.com - alternate LibriVox catalog that puts more info up front; optional iOS app
dalewking
Posts: 13
Joined: September 1st, 2010, 6:03 am

Post by dalewking »

annise wrote: May 14th, 2018, 10:04 pm not an API expert but shouldn't outsiders only be interested in completed projects? The 2 5 digit ones are not marked complete
Is there a way to find out if a book is completed? In my process I am getting just the IDs and then going out and getting metadata, so not sure how to filter out non-completed.
dynamicvoiceagent
Posts: 1
Joined: April 1st, 2019, 7:49 am

Post by dynamicvoiceagent »

Hey,

I'm trying to filter by language from the api, by doing https://librivox.org/api/feed/audiobooks?language=spanish, this does not seem to work. Any suggestions on how to do this? Or is this a functionality you could easily implement?

Thanks!
Cori
Posts: 12124
Joined: November 22nd, 2005, 10:22 am
Location: Britain
Contact:

Post by Cori »

I don't believe that is implemented as it stands, based on previous comments in the thread. We're not currently actively working on the API, though it's something we do want to look at in the future and requests here will help with the long-term priorities.
There's honestly no such thing as a stupid question -- but I'm afraid I can't rule out giving a stupid answer : : To Posterity and Beyond!
vu2tve
Posts: 4
Joined: March 28th, 2019, 8:01 am

Post by vu2tve »

Hi, I'm a volunteer to the Internet-in-a-Box project interested in offlining librivox and posted my query to the help section of this forum:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=74577

Would it be possible to use Librivox api to do a full dump of metadata and content of the website.
danielius
Posts: 3
Joined: November 15th, 2019, 2:42 am

Post by danielius »

Hey im an Android developer working on an app. How come https://librivox.org/rss/12349 redirects you to forums ? Got an error trying to download everything into my own database since I seem to be getting errors when trying to access the API https://librivox.org/api/feed/audiobooks?genre=66 I use the rss links to get the tracks download url's
ScottLawton
Posts: 243
Joined: October 14th, 2011, 1:38 pm

Post by ScottLawton »

vu2tve wrote: April 8th, 2019, 7:04 pm Would it be possible to use Librivox api to do a full dump of metadata and content of the website.
Lots of book data is available via the API, though there are several quirks & limitations so it takes time to build a complete catalog.
Some data is better gathered via the Internet Archive API.
In either case: that's not the full contents of the website per se, e.g. the About page and such.
Cheers,

Scott
Aplt1.com - alternate LibriVox catalog that puts more info up front; optional iOS app
ScottLawton
Posts: 243
Joined: October 14th, 2011, 1:38 pm

Post by ScottLawton »

danielius wrote: November 19th, 2019, 1:11 pm How come https://librivox.org/rss/12349 redirects you to forums ?
AFAIK: that ID was reserved as a placeholder for a specific book which isn't yet finished, so redirects to the relevant forum thread.
I seem to be getting errors when trying to access the API https://librivox.org/api/feed/audiobooks?genre=66
Perhaps someone else can help if you give both a working and non-working example. Or perhaps audiobooks?genre= is broken; no idea. (I made my own copy of the DB then query that.)
Cheers,

Scott
Aplt1.com - alternate LibriVox catalog that puts more info up front; optional iOS app
dalewking
Posts: 13
Joined: September 1st, 2010, 6:03 am

Post by dalewking »

ScottLawton wrote: November 19th, 2019, 4:09 pm
danielius wrote: November 19th, 2019, 1:11 pm How come https://librivox.org/rss/12349 redirects you to forums ?
AFAIK: that ID was reserved as a placeholder for a specific book which isn't yet finished, so redirects to the relevant forum thread.
Why does the API return un-finished books? Is there a way to filter them out?
ScottLawton
Posts: 243
Joined: October 14th, 2011, 1:38 pm

Post by ScottLawton »

I doubt there's a built-in filter. It's easy enough to do directly from your code: just catch the http redirect.

If you just want to invest minimal time to create a thin wrapper around the existing API, then you're likely to be disappointed. It will be difficult to create a good mobile UX. OTOH, if you're motivated enough to work around several gaps and limitations to harvest the data and define/host your own API (as several of us have done), then the current APIs (LibriVox + Internet Archive) suffice.

As context (based on my observations after the fact): the API was just a side project, and LibriVox is a group of volunteers. Given sufficient funding & people, I'm sure they'd be happy to upgrade the API ... and I think that would help make the books more easily/widely available. But the main LibriVox mission (my paraphrase / observation) is to record and upload books ... with lots of attention to people who do the reading/proofing etc. and (IMHO) less on the listener.

Of course: long-time volunteers who know more about the past, present & future workings of LibriVox are welcome to offer a more informed view. :-)
Cheers,

Scott
Aplt1.com - alternate LibriVox catalog that puts more info up front; optional iOS app
dalewking
Posts: 13
Joined: September 1st, 2010, 6:03 am

Post by dalewking »

ScottLawton wrote: November 19th, 2019, 4:27 pm I doubt there's a built-in filter. It's easy enough to do directly from your code: just catch the http redirect.
That's basically what I did. Catch the redirect and see if the location header contains "project-not-available"
Post Reply