Getting Alternate ISBNs

I’ve added the following function to the version of the XMLOPAC class I use internally so that I can get alternate ISBNs using OCLC’s xISBN service.

    public function get_altisbn($isbn) {
        $xmlopacurl = 'http://labs.oclc.org/xisbn/' . $isbn;
        $xml = self::prep_xml($xmlopacurl);
        $result = array();
        foreach ($xml->xpath('/idlist/isbn') as $temp) {
            $result[] = (string) $temp;
            }
        // the first element of the array is always the same as
        // the query ISBN, array_shift deletes it from the array
        array_shift($result);
        return($result);
    }

I then call it from within the get_opac_data() function like this:

    $result[altisbn] = self::get_altisbn($result[isbn]);

The result, of course, is an array of ISBNs that serves all sorts of meaningful purposes, like finding an ASIN when you don’t find a match for the cataloged ISBN.

Technorati Tags: isbn, library, libraries, oclc, php, web service, xml, xmlopac, xmlopac class

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