Checking if a ISBN is already being used, with Python

Question

I don't want to check if a ISBN is valid .

I'm trying to figure out if, given a ISBN isbn , there's already a book associated with it.

What I already tried

I was planning to use the following function:

import requests

def is_isbn_already_used(isbn:str)->bool:
    """ Given a ISBN string, returns True if there's a
    book already associated with it"""

    # Tries to search ISBN in the below site
    response = requests.get("https://isbnsearch.org/isbn/" + isbn)
    
    # checks if the site doesn't have any info about that isbn
    return not ("Not Found" in response.text)

The problem is: The part where the function gets the text of the page doesn't works as I expected. Probably, because the site is dynamic, it waits a few ms before showing the info about the book.

I was thinking of dealing with Selenium's Webdriver for Firefox, but then I would need to deal with the captcha.

Any idea would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Well, I'll answer my own question: I decided to use the Google Books' API.

Worth noting that this API is non-strict when it searches for ISBNs: Searching for a ISBN that is not officially associated with any book, like 9780062059942, will return a book with an ISBN closely associated with 9780062059942: The Selection, in this case.

So, I modified my function:

from requests import get


def check_isbn_already_associated(isbn:str)->bool:
    """Returns True if this isbn is already associated with a book"""
    response = get("https://www.googleapis.com/books/v1/volumes?q=isbn:" + isbn)

    return isbn in response.text