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questions > Dealing with Series

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message 1: by Jonathan (new)

Jonathan Alp | 2 comments So I just got into trying to use this API, and I would like to implement a feature to find other books in a series. Say I read Harry Potter 1, I'd like it to return numbers 2-7 for example.

To add books, I use the ISBN, and thus use the search function, and get a whole lot of useful book data.
- After this I have to check which series the work is in, with the work ID
- Then I can get the series ID, which is then used to see the series.

I have a problem though - in the returns of the series are only the work IDs of books, which I can't use to get any book information. No normal book ID or ISBN or anything.

Is there something I am missing here? How can I use these work IDs, or get useful information from the series returns?


message 2: by Charles (new)

Charles Kim | 28 comments Hi Jonathan,

In the series return data, book id's for a work are returned under the best_book tag.


message 3: by Jonathan (last edited Dec 23, 2015 10:12PM) (new)

Jonathan Alp | 2 comments I must have missed that because then it seems to be a different book ID than the ones I've previously found for a book: ie Harry Potter 1 has book ID 3 from the series (which is quite low and unexpected) and 848654 from the isbn, what would explain this difference? Different versions of the book?

Edit: Where are my manners... Thank you for the reply!


message 4: by Jeff (new)

Jeff (jeffwong) | 75 comments Mod
These are different editions of the same work. Harry Potter #1 is book ID 3 because Otis added Harry Potter as the first few books when he created Goodreads.


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