I’ve written a PHP script that takes a III Bib # and, using amazon’s REST interface, it tries it’s darnedest to find the ASIN for that item. It will then store that Bib#-ASIN pair in a database. After that, it will cache the small, medium and large cover images associated with that ASIN in another database table and display whichever one you want.

This script requires the latest version of the III-XMLOPAC class (1.6), PEAR::DB, MySQL (of course) and PHP5 (or PHP4 with SimpleXML). In addition to that, you’ll need to have your own Amazon Dev token, etc.

Essentially, I wanted a way to get more cover art into the catalog. If you currently use Syndetics, you’ll know that you almost never get any cover art for CDs and DVDs. My solution was to write this. Just to warn you, though, this script will not return ASINs and cover art for all the items in your collection. Far from it. There is about a 30% hit-rate. I could easily get that higher, but then accuracy drops off, and I want 100% accuracy.

So, I plan on working with this script, massaging the search to figure out ways to get that 30% up. Please feel free to hack away at it yourselves too, but bear in mind, that I’m looking for accuracy above all else. If you’re really interested in how I’m determining an accurate hit, take a look at the code. Basically, I’m doing an initial search, then I match the UPC number on the amazon record to the stdnum info from the Bib record. Doing it this way, I haven’t seen a wrong match yet.

Incidentally, here is a hit list with images from this script:

To use it, you’d basically do something like this:

<?php
 
$bibnum = "123456";
echo  '<img src="/azImgSrc.php?bnum=' . $bibnum . '">';
 
?>

As a side bonus, you’ll have a nice table with Bib#-to-ASIN data. You can even manually add data to that table to ensure your favorite records have images associated with them.