originally: http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/xisbn/technical.htm
Note: The experimental xISBN prototype transitioned to production service on 15 February 2007. The information here is provided for historical purposes only. Information about the new service is available at http://www.worldcat.org/affiliate/webservices/xisbn/app.jsp.
The xISBN service is a REST-based web service. Queries sent to the service must take the form of URLs. The user may choose from either an XML (default) or XHTML response. Because several cases are possible with any given ISBN, the information below summarizes how the service will respond to common situations:
For example, the URI http://labs.oclc.org/xisbn/0192816640 [The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker / George Tobias Smollett] returns XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> - <idlist> <isbn>0192816640</isbn> <isbn>0820312037</isbn> <isbn>0820315370</isbn> <isbn>0393015920</isbn> <isbn>0393952274</isbn> <isbn>0393952835</isbn> <isbn>0140430210</isbn> <isbn>0192811320</isbn> <isbn>0192835947</isbn> <isbn>0460872885</isbn> <isbn>1853262706</isbn> <isbn>0874131219</isbn> </idlist>
Alternately if an XTHML response is preferred, the same query with the value ".html" appended - e.g., http://labs.oclc.org/xisbn/0192816640.html returns:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head><title>ISBN List</title></head> <body> <a>0192816640</a><br/> <a>0820312037</a><br/> <a>0820315370</a><br/> <a>0393015920</a><br/> <a>0393952274</a><br/> <a>0393952835</a><br/> <a>0140430210</a><br/> <a>0192811320</a><br/> <a>0192835947</a><br/> <a>0460872885</a><br/> <a>1853262706</a><br/> <a>0874131219</a><br/> </body> </html>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> - <idlist> <isbn>8878120677</isbn> </idlist>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> - <idlist> <isbn>9570140445</isbn> </idlist>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> - <idlist> <unknownID>10001000</unknownID> </idlist>
Note: The experimental xISBN prototype transitioned to production service on 15 February 2007. The information here is provided for historical purposes only. Information about the new service is available at http://www.worldcat.org/affiliate/webservices/xisbn/app.jsp.
As an experimental project of OCLC Research, the service is available without charge or guarantee. Access does not require registration or authentication. OCLC reserves the right to modify or discontinue the service without prior notice. The xISBN server is believed to be stable, have good uptime, and to have the capacity to handle a reasonably high volume of requests without a significant degradation of response time or service failures, but OCLC does not guarantee service levels for experimental systems.