Talis Developer Network - Bespoke ASIN or a real ISBN - Comments

ISBN from Amazon

Richard Wallis — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 10:18:59 +0100

You can get the ISBN returned fom Amazon

http://webservices.amazon.co.uk/onca/xml?Service=AWSECommerceService&SubscriptionId={Your sub id here}&AssociateTag={ your associate id here }&Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex=Books&ResponseGroup=Medium&Power=title:a+year+in+Provence

Returns data in an xml schema form that includes ISBN as a tag below 'ItemAttributes'.

Is that what you were after?

Richard Wallis
Technology Evangelist - Talis

Any way to tell? At the

dburden — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:52:52 +0100

Any way to tell? At the moment Amazon appears to be the only way of doing a title to ISBN look up - unless you can point me at another system.

ASINs are Amazon's own

Ian Davis — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 19:09:11 +0100

ASINs are Amazon's own unique identifiers for their products. Sometimes they appear to correspond to ISBNs but not always.

Bespoke ASIN or a real ISBN

dburden — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 18:12:26 +0100

I've just noticed that Amazon is returning ASINS (usually ISBNs for books) looking like:

B000GTNFQQ B0002TX4QQ

(A Year in Provence)

Are these actually ISBNs or Amazon's own things. If the latter how can I differentiate what is a true ISBN, as they don't appear to throw up any results on the Hodlings API so I'dlike to ignore them.?

David