[Metadata Source Plugin] Barnes & Noble

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• More B&N website changes - if fallback to title/author search, just use a keyword search
• When matching results for title/author, handle new website page layout

Looks like B&N snuck out some more web page changes fairly recently, which meant the plugin was no longer able to find a match based on title/author (such as when no ISBN match).

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Ensure the "Image not available" cover images are excluded from results

[KonradK]

Feature Request:
Option to remove "[NOOK Book]" from returned title.

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Improve the title/author matching logic for new website layout
• Ensure "[NOOK Book]" is always stripped from the title

[KonradK]

Many thanks from happy donor.

[kiwidude]

No wuckas, and thanks for the donation - that is most definitely always appreciated by me!

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Further tweaking to improve matching of search results to match latest website layout

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Fix logic for extracting series from title due to B&N website changes
• Improve the image not available exclusion checking

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Use a different search URL for title/author searches which seems to give better search results

[kiwidude]

Changes in this release:

• Updates for changes to B&N website

[tarisea]

Hi again Kiwidude. After entirely too much frustration with Amazon and and ASIN and after reading how much you like Barnes and Noble, I have switched over. I must say I am very happy with this plug-in.

I have only 1 question: why do the ids appear like this:
barnesnoble:w/die-trying-lee-child/1100026735
barnesnoble:w/summons-john-grisham/1100289989
barnesnoble:w/forgotten-faye-kellerman/1103370470

It's just weird and takes up a lot of room. Not that in the end it really matters.

Thanks for taking the time for me.

[kiwidude]

@tarisea - because that is the minimum amount of the url required that is unique to each book to be able to go back to the associated page. Blame how B&N do their website - you will see similar long ids for FantasticFiction.

[Nomad2k4]

Would it be possible to add an option to pull metadata based on the "format" information on Barnes & Noble's website? The reason I ask is that the Nook Editions of books have a format of "ebook" and still show the older flat cover images, whereas many of the paperbacks (the Classic Series, for instance) now show a side view of the book, which isn't really a suitable image for thumbnails.

I'm hoping that if you pull the metadata for by Title and Format, you can 1) Pull the flat cover image and 2) Update the ISBN with the ebook version information instead of the paperback ISBN.

Thanks.

[kiwidude]

There isn't a reliable way of guaranteeing what version data you get back because of the variables involved. Really the only way you could do it is to only have this one plugin enabled, extract the isbn from the book (using the Extract ISBN plugin) and then do your metadata download.

As soon as other metadata download plugins are enabled, then all the factors of which isbn pool, which other isbn is chosen etc mean that it would be a lottery as to what happens. If a search is done by isbn against the website, there will be only one result - and no finangling by the plugin is going to be appropriate to attempt to bring back a different edition just because the isbn you started with isn't the ebook one.

[Nomad2k4]

Thanks for the reply. That's pretty much what I'm doing now. I search the Barnes and Noble webpage for the book using the exact title and then publisher, search for the Nook Books edition, make sure that "Format: eBook" in listed under Product Details, and then replace the ISBN in Calibre with the one listed under Product Details. I then disable all other metadata plugins and refresh the metadata and cover. Works perfectly, just requires manual effort for each book.

I just thought that if the plugin scraped for the format field, it could be used to further refine the search on the B&N site to get metadata specific to the electronic versions of books. Looking at the search URL on B&N though, I see that ISBN (ean) is one of the search fields returned, so I'm guessing that the plugin needs the ISBN first to find the metadata and so would not work without it?