[Sugar-devel] Some thoughts on GetBooks activity

[James Simmons]

It turns out that feedparser has a version that is new enough to support
Python 3 but old enough to fit in two files, one of which replaces sgml.py.
I can get rid of the current files instead of trying to make them work with
Python 3 myself. I'm going to try this tonight.

It also turns out that the Activity does use OPDS for Internet Archive,
just not for book searches. It uses it to browse catalogs like most
downloaded, newly added, alphabetical by title, etc. So if I got that
working we'd have a fancier Get IA Books even if Feedbooks goes away.

James Simmons

On Tue, Mar 5, 2024 at 10:07 AM Chihurumnaya Ibiam <ibiam at sugarlabs.org>
wrote:

> Agreed, activities depending on external APIs are difficult to maintain
> and if anyone is willing to do it
> then it can work.
>
> --
>
> Ibiam Chihurumnaya
> ibiam at sugarlabs.org
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 5, 2024 at 6:04 AM James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org> wrote:
>
>> Yes, I remember some of this from when I last maintained those activities.
>>
>> I felt that activities that depended on external APIs become difficult to
>> maintain.  ;-)
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 04, 2024 at 01:46:44PM -0600, James Simmons wrote:
>> > Back in 2009 I wrote the Get IA Books activity which uses the Advanced
>> Search
>> > service of the Internet Archive to search their catalog and makes it
>> possible
>> > to download these books to the Journal and put some metadata in there
>> as well.
>> >
>> > Shortly after I finished this Sayamindu Dasgupta made a similar
>> Activity that
>> > used OPDS to search book catalogs. Specifically he was interested in
>> using OPDS
>> > to search [1]https://www.feedbooks.com, which had an OPDS server that
>> included
>> > public domain books. He also made it possible for the Activity user to
>> add an
>> > entry for his own OPDS server, but you had to edit a text file using the
>> > Terminal activity to do it.
>> >
>> > I have just fixed my own Activity to work with Python 3 and wanted to
>> try
>> > fixing this one too. I've run into a few problems which makes me think
>> this
>> > Activity might not be fixable.
>> >
>> > 1. Feedbooks.com is going out of business very soon. It is possible
>> that their
>> > OPDS server is already not working: [2]
>> https://www.feedbooks.com/catalog/
>> > public_domain
>> > 2. There are other ODPS servers, but not for public domain titles:
>> [3]http://
>> > opdshome.uo1.net/
>> > 3. The Internet Archive has an OPDS server but this Activity doesn't
>> use it.
>> > Instead it adapted code from my GetIABooks activity. Apparently the IA
>> OPDS
>> > server had issues when this was written.
>> > 3. The Activity makes use of code from [4]http://feedparser.org/.
>> > Unfortunately, the latest version of this cannot be contained in just
>> one file.
>> > The old version depends on sgmllib.py, which was included with Python 2
>> but not
>> > with 3. Somebody found the code for this and ran it through a Python 2
>> to 3
>> > converter. I added this to the project.
>> > 4. I managed to convert enough code in feedparser.py and sgmllib.py to
>> get the
>> > Activity to run without generating diagnostic messages. I have no idea
>> if it is
>> > actually working.
>> >
>> > Thoughts?
>> >
>> > James Simmons
>> >
>> > References:
>> >
>> > [1] https://www.feedbooks.com/
>> > [2] https://www.feedbooks.com/catalog/public_domain
>> > [3] http://opdshome.uo1.net/
>> > [4] http://feedparser.org/
>>
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>
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