Create new book fails: "Creation failed, book may already exist!"

[pawsen]

Creating a new book fails. As an example, take this guide book for rock climbing. The book exist on amazon,
https://www.amazon.it/Schweiz-Plaisir-sch%C3%B6nsten-Klettereien-Niveau-4a-6a/dp/3906087034

ol --create '{"identifiers": {"isbn_10": ["3906087034"]},
 "title": "Schweiz Plaisir",
 "publisher": "Filidor, Schweiz",
 "publish_date": "1993",
 "pages": "256",
 "author": "Jürg Von Känel"
}'

returns

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/anaconda3/envs/bibliotek/bin/ol", line 8, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "/usr/local/anaconda3/envs/bibliotek/lib/python3.8/site-packages/olclient/cli.py", line 129, in main
    edition = ol.Work.create(book)
  File "/usr/local/anaconda3/envs/bibliotek/lib/python3.8/site-packages/olclient/openlibrary.py", line 235, in create
    ed = cls.OL.create_book(book, debug=debug)
  File "/usr/local/anaconda3/envs/bibliotek/lib/python3.8/site-packages/olclient/openlibrary.py", line 935, in create_book
    return self._create_book(
  File "/usr/local/anaconda3/envs/bibliotek/lib/python3.8/site-packages/olclient/openlibrary.py", line 983, in _create_book
    raise ValueError('Creation failed, book may already exist!')
ValueError: Creation failed, book may already exist!

Looking at https://openlibrary.org/api/books?bibkeys=ISBN:3906087034&jscmd=data&format=json, we see the book does not exist. Same for google books,
https://www.googleapis.com/books/v1/volumes?q=isbn:3906087034&fields=items/volumeInfo(title,subtitle,authors,publisher,publishedDate,language,industryIdentifiers,pageCount,imageLinks.thumbnail,categories)&maxResults=1

I am using the latest git version. But I get same response using the version from pip.

Am I doing something wrong?

[LeadSongDog]

That author’s record did not exist, though there were two records for them without the umlauts.

[pawsen]

Ok, then maybe I don't understand the process of creating a new book using the client.
What should I do create the book? Can you point me towards some documentation or give an example?

[LeadSongDog]

I’m not sure if the client is able to create new authors yet. It doesn’t look like it to me. I raised an issue.

[pawsen]

Ok. Another question(though not related to this issue),

How do I get the olid for an Edition, if I know the olid for a Work?

One example,

ol --get-work --title 'No latitude for error'
{"py/object": "olclient.common.Book", "authors": [{"name": "Sir Edmund Hillary", "olid": "OL78637A"}], "cover": "", "identifiers": {"goodreads": [], "isbns": [], "lccn": ["61003313", "61011015"], "librarything": ["4120408"], "oclc": ["487167"], "olid": ["OL888738W"]}, "pages": null, "publish_date": 1961, "publisher": "Hodder & Stoughton", "subtitle": null, "title": "No latitude for error"}

With Work olid=OL888738W how do I get the possible Editions(and ISBNs)?

Looking at https://openlibrary.org/works/OL888738W.json gives nothing, but from https://openlibrary.org/works/OL888738W I find there are two Editions.

[LeadSongDog]

The doc at https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary-client#command-line-tool would seem to suggest trying:
ol —get-book —olid OL888738W

[pawsen]

Yes, but the required olid is the Edition olid(eg. ending with M). Using the command you suggest result in a error.

This would work

ol --get-book --olid OL5824058M

But I do not know how to get one of the Edition olid's from the Work olid.

[LeadSongDog]

Perhaps the command line tool just does not yet support that part of the API. The python library suggests that it someday could:
https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary-client#works

[pawsen]

Oh, @LeadSongDog,

I am sorry. You are totally right. I removed my previous comment, which was wrong. Thank you for replying.

work = OL.Work.get('OL888738W')
work.editions

or using the web,

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL888738W.json
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL888738W/editions.json

or directly from ISBN(different book)
http://openlibrary.org/isbn/9780143127048.json

[hornc]

This is still an issue, and looks like it affects all command line create operations.

From adding some more debugging to the client I see that the exact error from OL is:

<class 'AttributeError'> at /books/add
'authors'
Python 	/home/openlibrary/.local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/web/utils.py in __getattr__, line 105
Web 	POST https://openlibrary.org/books/add

I think that possibly there have been some changes to the /books/add endpoint around authors resolving to their OLIDs that may have broken this.

The error isn't limited to the CLI interface, ol.create_book() has the same problem.

[hornc]

https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/blob/c69c9f4526f193c1e9e4d46c1591839a41860f12/openlibrary/plugins/upstream/addbook.py#L241-L243

where i is

i | <Storage {'debug': 'true', 'id_name': 'isbn_10', 'author_key': 'new', 'author_name': 'Jürg Von Känel', 'publisher': 'Filidor, Schweiz', 'id_value': '3906087034', 'title': 'Schweiz Plaisir', 'publish_date': '1993', '_save': '', 'web_book_url': '', '_test': 'false'}>

The current code is expecting an authors key.

Looks like this changed in this commit, and has been broken for a loooong time:

internetarchive/openlibrary@4e489c4

I'd be inclined to scrap the /books/add endpoint and use the more current api method https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/wiki/Endpoints#data-import