ambrowse

ambrowse extracts book metadata from saved amazon.com, amazon.co.uk or amazon.de pages. It watches the directory 'ambrowse' inside your HOME, digests newly written files and adds the metadata to a list in 'books.yaml'. It then removes those files after a time delay, leaving only the metadata list.

You can find releases on releases.gutmet.org or build it yourself.

build

If you want to build ambrowse yourself, you need go1.11+ with module support. Clone this repository and type 'go build ambrowse.go'.

quick start

Download a release from releases.gutmet.org and unzip it. Put the correct file for your operating system somewhere you can run it. Then start a command line:

> ambrowse
2019/01/13 19:06:34 ambrowse is watching /home/johndoe/ambrowse

Go to amazon, visit a book page and save it to the folder ambrowse is watching.

2019/01/13 19:06:40 Reading metadata from /home/johndoe/ambrowse/Metallbearbeitung II: Verbindungstechniken, Gebrauchsgegenstaende aus Metall ALS-Werk- und Arbeitsmappen: Amazon.de: Ingrid Kreide, Wolfram Enders: Buecher.html

If you are on Unix or MacOS, you will get a desktop notification about the extracted metadata. You might want to add the watched folder to your favorites to reduce the number of clicks and add ambrowse to the services that are automatically started. I recommend using an anonymity service when browsing amazon, such as the TOR browser.

example

The file 'books.yaml' inside the watched folder might look like this:

---

title: "Essential Bushcraft"
authors: [Ray Mears (Autor)]
publisher: "Hodder & Stoughton General Division; Auflage: Reprint (23. Juni 2003)"
isbn10: 0340829710
isbn13: 978-0340829714
amazonPrice: "EUR 24,01"

---

title: "Ray Mears Outdoor Survival Handbook: The Classic Indispensable Guide to 
Surviving the Outdoors"
authors: [Ray Mears (Autor)]
publisher: "Ebury Press (30. Mai 2001)"
isbn10: 0091878861
isbn13: 978-0091878863
amazonPrice: "EUR 20,35"

So far it seems like this format is bookseller-parseable.

systemd setup

Those afflicted by systemd (my sympathies) can put something like this in /etc/systemd/user/ambrowse.service:

[Unit]
Description=ambrowse

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/home/johndoe/path/to/ambrowse

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Run 'systemctl --user start ambrowse' to test and 'systemctl --user enable ambrowse' to permanently enable.

Final note

If you want to buy me a beer, just send inconspicuous envelopes.