readme.md

php-google-books

Simple PHP package for working with the Google Books API. With Laravel5 integration. Doesn't yet support authentication, so it only works with public data. PRs are welcome.

Install using Composer

Make sure you have Composer installed, then run

composer require scriptotek/google-books

in your project directory to get the latest stable version of the package.

Usage

Start by creating a new client:

require_once('vendor/autoload.php');
use Scriptotek\GoogleBooks\GoogleBooks;

$books = new GoogleBooks(['key' => 'YOUR_API_KEY_HERE']);

Note that you can also use the API without specifying an API key, but you will then get a lower request quota. A UsageLimitExceeded exception is thrown when you reach the quota.

Working with volumes

Getting a single volume by id:

$volume = $books->volumes->get('kdwPAQAAMAAJ');

or by ISBN:

$volume = $books->volumes->byIsbn('0521339057');

Search:

foreach ($books->volumes->search('Hello world') as $vol) {
    echo $vol->title . "\n";
}

Note that the search() method returns a generator that automatically fetches more results until the result list is depleted. If there are thousands of results this will of course take a long time to fetch, so you probably want to define a limit. Limits can be defined as an option: ['maxResults' => 10] inside the GoogleBooks class.

Working with bookshelves

Getting a single bookshelf by user id and shelf id:

$shelf = $books->bookshelves->get('113555231101190020526', '1002');

List the public bookshelves of a user, and their volumes:

foreach ($books->bookshelves->byUser('113555231101190020526') as $shelf) {
    echo "<h2>$shelf->title</h2>\n";
    echo "<ul>\n";
    foreach ($shelf->getVolumes() as $vol) {
        echo "  <li>$vol->title</li>\n";
    }
    echo "</ul>\n";
}

Laravel 5 integration

This project ships with a service provider that you can add to the $providers array in your config/app.php:

Scriptotek\GoogleBooks\GoogleBooksServiceProvider::class,

There's also a facade you can add to the $aliases array if you like:

'GoogleBooks' => Scriptotek\GoogleBooks\GoogleBooksFacade::class,

Run

$ php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Scriptotek\GoogleBooks\GoogleBooksServiceProvider"

to create the config/googlebooks.php configuration file.

Troubleshooting

If you get 403 Forbidden with

{
 "error": {
  "errors": [
   {
    "domain": "global",
    "reason": "unknownLocation",
    "message": "Cannot determine user location for geographically restricted operation."
   }
  ],
  "code": 403,
  "message": "Cannot determine user location for geographically restricted operation."
 }
}

it means the Books API failed to locate you based on your ip address. Fix this by specifying the 2 letter ISO639 country code manually using the country option to the constructor:

$books = new GoogleBooks(['country' => 'NO']);