ISBNdb.com project is a database of books providing on-line and remote research tools for individuals, book stores, librarians, scientists, etc. Taking data from hundreds of libraries across the world, ISBNdb is a unique tool you won't find anywhere else. At the time of writing this, the ISBNDB database contained over 6,000,000 books.

The ISBNDB allows free remote access to its database via its API. At the time of writing this, the service is restricted to 500 lookups per day. Further lookups can be purchased at reasonable rates. For example, $10.00 would give you 4,000 additional lookups.

The procedure for enabling this feature in Maian Cart is a simple one. Please follow these instructions:

1. Sign up for a free account at ISBNDB.com.

2. Log into your account and access the 'Developer Area'.

3. Click 'Manage Access Keys'.



4. Click 'Generate a new key'.



5. Enter comment for key reference. Can be anything. Leave 'Daily Use Limit' blank or enter 0. Then click 'Generate new key':



6. Your new key is created. From the left menu click 'Manage Keys'.



7. View your new key and copy the key number (highlight and ctrl-c):



8. Access your Maian Cart admin area and on the settings page, paste (ctrl-v) the key into the ISBNDB access API key box:



Thats it, you are done.

Once the key is enabled you`ll see a 'ISBN Lookup' link next to the product name box on the 'Catalogue > Add Product' page.



Enter ISBN number in product name box and click link to perform lookup. If available, book title/name and summary (description) will be auto filled in. In some cases, not all data is returned. For many books there is no summary and believe or not no author name. Its trial and error. If the data returned seems broke this is a restriction of the ISBNDB service and NOT a fault in Maian Cart.

By default the returned product name/title will be: {title} - {author}. If you wish to change this edit the following language file: admin/templates/language/english/system/settings.php Edit the following: $msg_settings220 = '{book} - {author}';

Finally, because PHP4 doesn`t have the simple xml functions available, the system will require the 'allow_url_fopen' is on. The script will attempt to activate it for the lookup operation only, but if its unsuccessful you may see the following error: "This feature is unavailable on your server, sorry." If this occurs you need to either enable the 'allow_url_fopen' directive in your PHP.ini file or use the script on a server that supports PHP5.

The same or additional information may be provided by hovering your cursor over the image next to each heading in the admin area if applicable.