Blog ≫ 2009 ≫ Kent libraries Amazon Firefox Greasemonkey mashup

Can you call it a mash up if you used greasemonkey? Works anyway

I've made a firefox plugin, to look up if a book's available in the library when you're viewing its page on Amazon. Normally I'd be sending people TO Amazon 1 rather than from Amazon 1, hoping to make a commission, but here's where I give something back. To you, if not to Amazon. Here's how to see what I've done - Use Firefox 2 as your web browser, install Greasemonkey 3 install my script, then go to a book page on amazon 1. Then if all has gone smoothly you should see something like this appear below the title of the book:

[flickr]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3569/3566040597_1259b3774b.jpg?v=0[/flickr]

Those (Deal + East Peckham + Lenham + Pembury + Riverview Park + West Malling) all being the local libraries that have a copy of the book, no Folkestone on that example 1.

Anyone still with me..?

I will tidy it up a bit when I've done the rest of my chores... Don't try it on that greasemonkey book 1, as nowhere in Kent has it.

Firefox 2 is a web browser, Greasemonkey is a plugin for Firefox that makes it easy for people to write little bits of code that run when you visit a page. Next stop, write a real plugin so people don't need Greasemonkey installed. Also add more features like this Seattle library search 4 that is smart enough to know that if the hardback is not available look for the paperback and so on.

UPDATE: Got rid of my proxy which I wrote because the original library data was not that easy to work with... so the new version goes direct from your browser to the library, without going via my server... Saves me some bandwidth but does mean I can't really log things now or monitor when it's going wrong.

UPDATE UPDATE: lost this one when moving to the static site that time.

  1. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
  2. Removed old mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/ link here.
  3. Removed old addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748 link here.
  4. Removed old userscripts.org/scripts/show/1396 link here.

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Paul Clarkeʼs weblog - I live in Hythe near Folkestone, Kent. Wed to Clare and dad to two, I'm a full stack web engineer, + I do js / Node, some ruby, python, php etc. I like pubs, parkrun, eating, home-automation + other diy jiggery-pokery, history, genealogy, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.