<div dir="ltr"><div>Agreed, activities depending on external APIs are difficult to maintain and if anyone is willing to do it</div><div>then it can work.<br></div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><pre style="color:rgb(46,52,54);letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:monospace,monospace">-- <br></span></pre><div style="color:rgb(46,52,54);font-size:14.6667px;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;width:71ch"><span style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><span></span><span></span>Ibiam Chihurumnaya</span></div><div style="color:rgb(46,52,54);font-size:14.6667px;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;width:71ch"><span style="font-family:monospace,monospace"><a href="mailto:ibiam@sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">ibiam@sugarlabs.org</a><br></span></div><br></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Mar 5, 2024 at 6:04 AM James Cameron <<a href="mailto:quozl@laptop.org">quozl@laptop.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Yes, I remember some of this from when I last maintained those activities.<br>
<br>
I felt that activities that depended on external APIs become difficult to maintain. ;-)<br>
<br>
On Mon, Mar 04, 2024 at 01:46:44PM -0600, James Simmons wrote:<br>
> Back in 2009 I wrote the Get IA Books activity which uses the Advanced Search<br>
> service of the Internet Archive to search their catalog and makes it possible<br>
> to download these books to the Journal and put some metadata in there as well.<br>
> <br>
> Shortly after I finished this Sayamindu Dasgupta made a similar Activity that<br>
> used OPDS to search book catalogs. Specifically he was interested in using OPDS<br>
> to search [1]<a href="https://www.feedbooks.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.feedbooks.com</a>, which had an OPDS server that included<br>
> public domain books. He also made it possible for the Activity user to add an<br>
> entry for his own OPDS server, but you had to edit a text file using the<br>
> Terminal activity to do it.<br>
> <br>
> I have just fixed my own Activity to work with Python 3 and wanted to try<br>
> fixing this one too. I've run into a few problems which makes me think this<br>
> Activity might not be fixable.<br>
> <br>
> 1. Feedbooks.com is going out of business very soon. It is possible that their<br>
> OPDS server is already not working: [2]<a href="https://www.feedbooks.com/catalog/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.feedbooks.com/catalog/</a><br>
> public_domain<br>
> 2. There are other ODPS servers, but not for public domain titles: [3]http://<br>
> <a href="http://opdshome.uo1.net/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">opdshome.uo1.net/</a><br>
> 3. The Internet Archive has an OPDS server but this Activity doesn't use it.<br>
> Instead it adapted code from my GetIABooks activity. Apparently the IA OPDS<br>
> server had issues when this was written.<br>
> 3. The Activity makes use of code from [4]<a href="http://feedparser.org/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://feedparser.org/</a>.<br>
> Unfortunately, the latest version of this cannot be contained in just one file.<br>
> The old version depends on sgmllib.py, which was included with Python 2 but not<br>
> with 3. Somebody found the code for this and ran it through a Python 2 to 3<br>
> converter. I added this to the project.<br>
> 4. I managed to convert enough code in feedparser.py and sgmllib.py to get the<br>
> Activity to run without generating diagnostic messages. I have no idea if it is<br>
> actually working.<br>
> <br>
> Thoughts?<br>
> <br>
> James Simmons<br>
> <br>
> References:<br>
> <br>
> [1] <a href="https://www.feedbooks.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.feedbooks.com/</a><br>
> [2] <a href="https://www.feedbooks.com/catalog/public_domain" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.feedbooks.com/catalog/public_domain</a><br>
> [3] <a href="http://opdshome.uo1.net/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://opdshome.uo1.net/</a><br>
> [4] <a href="http://feedparser.org/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://feedparser.org/</a><br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div>