• Using the Open Library Website
  • Logging In (As Admin)
  • Admin Interface
  • Testing the site with different users
  • Lending & Borrowing
  • Configuration
• Importing Test Data (moved)
• Frontend Developer's Guide (moved)
• Backend Developer's Guide
  • Memcache
  • Log Files
  • Database
  • reCAPTCHA v2
• FAQs
• Credits

We use Docker at Open Library. Follow the instructions on https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/tree/master/docker#readme first to get your local copy of Open Library up and running!.

We use Docker at Open Library. These are some of the basic commands, refer here for some more useful commands.

Starts all the Open Library services:

$ docker compose up

Start a specific service:

The following command starts the solr service in the detached mode (in the background)

$ docker compose up --no-deps -d solr

Logs of the services can be found:

$ docker compose logs web  # replace "web" with any other service name to see that particular service's log

Start a bash shell inside the container:

$ docker compose exec web bash  # replace "web" with any other service name

Runs all the tests

$ docker compose run --rm home make test

You can log into the Open Library instance as an admin

Username: [email protected]
Password: admin123

For users with sufficient privileges, an admin interface is available at http://localhost:8080/admin.

To view and test the site as a non-admin user:

1. Log into your local dev instance (http://localhost:8080) as the [email protected] admin user.
2. Enter the admin interface URL: http://localhost:8080/admin and select the People option (http://localhost:8080/admin/people)
3. Select the user AccountBot from the "Recent Accounts" table.
4. At the top of the user page (http://localhost:8080/admin/people/AccountBot) there will be two red buttons -- click on "login as this user".

You should now be logged in as a standard user, AccountBot, and will be able to make edits, but not delete items etc.

To add AccountBot to a specific usergroup, such as librarians:

As the admin user [email protected];

1. Open the librarians usergroup page in edit mode: http://localhost:8080/usergroup/librarians?m=edit
2. Add /people/AccountBot in the first "Members" slot and save the page.

Now you should be able to login as AccountBot using the instructions above and operate as a librarian.

These instructions are fairly specific to Internet Archive staff who are administrating the Open Library service and who have access to the production olsystem repository.

It essentially enables your local developer repository to behave as if it were actually openlibrary.org, and thus sync with and to openlibrary.org's loans:

To enable lending on localhost check this

Various configuration options can be found in conf/openlibrary.yml

Add conf/openlibrary.yaml to .git/info/exclude so that any changes to the conf file do not show up as dirty on git.

Book covers

By default, uploading book covers will work in the local development environment, but some of the existing books might 404 for their covers. This is expected, since now actual images are included in the test database.

If you use copydocs (see below) to import books, these imported books will also 404 on their covers. For these, you can change coverstore_public_url in conf/openlibrary.yml to https://covers.openlibrary.org/ . This will change the web page to fetch covers from production instead of your local environment.

Be sure to restart your dev instance after any configuration changes.

This section moved here.

This section moved here.

• Infobase queries get cached in memcache. In the dev instance, there is a single-node memcache instance that you can test by connecting to it:

$ docker compose run --rm home python
Python 3.10.5 (main, Jun 23 2022, 17:14:57)
[Clang 13.1.6 (clang-1316.0.21.2.5)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import yaml
>>> from openlibrary.utils import olmemcache
>>> with open('/openlibrary/conf/openlibrary-docker.yml') as in_file:
...     y = yaml.safe_load(in_file)
...
>>> mc = olmemcache.Client(y['memcache_servers'])

to GET the memcached entry:

>>> mc.get('/authors/OL18319A')
'{"bio": {"type": "/type/text", "value": "Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which has been called \\"the Great American Novel\\", and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He is extensively quoted. Twain was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. ([Source][1].)\\r\\n\\r\\n[1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain"}, "photograph": "/static/files//697/OL2622189A_photograph_1212404607766697.jpg", "name": "Mark Twain", "marc": ["1 \\u001faTwain, Mark,\\u001fd1835-1910.\\u001e"], "alternate_names": ["Mark TWAIN", "M. Twain", "TWAIN", "Twain", "Twain, Mark (pseud)", "Twain, Mark (Spirit)", "Twain, Mark, 1835-1910", "Mark (Samuel L. Clemens) Twain", "Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)", "Samuel Langhorne Clemens", "mark twain "], "death_date": "21 April 1910", "wikipedia": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain", "created": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2013-03-28T07:50:47.897206"}, "last_modified": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2013-03-28T07:50:47.897206"}, "latest_revision": 1, "key": "/authors/OL18319A", "birth_date": "30 November 1835", "title": "(pseud)", "personal_name": "Mark Twain", "type": {"key": "/type/author"}, "revision": 1}'

to DELETE a memcached entry:

>>> mc.delete('/authors/OL18319A')

• You can also find memcached items using the Internet Archive ID (import memcache instead of olmemecache):

>>> import yaml
>>> import memcache
>>> with open('openlibrary.yml') as in_file:
...     y = yaml.safe_load(in_file)
...
>>> mc = memcache.Client(y['memcache_servers'])

>>> mc.get('ia.get_metadata-"houseofscorpion00farmrich"')

• Logs for the upstart services will be in /var/log/upstart/.

• The app server logs will be in /var/log/upstart/ol-web.log.

• You should never work directly with the database, all the data are indeed managed by Open Library through infobase, but, if you are brave and curious, here you can find some useful info.

• The first thing you have to know is that Open Library is based on a triplestore database running on Postgres.

• To connect to the db run:

su postgres
psql openlibrary

• All the OL’s entities are stored as things in the thing table.

Every raw contains:

• It is useful identify the id of some particular types: /type/author /type/work /type/edition /type/user

openlibrary=# SELECT * FROM thing WHERE key='/type/author' OR key='/type/edition' OR key='/type/work' OR key='/type/user';

this query returns something like:

• to count the authors:

openlibrary=# SELECT count(*) as count FROM thing WHERE type='58';

• to count the works:

openlibrary=# SELECT count(*) as count FROM thing WHERE type='17872418';

• to count the editions:

openlibrary=# SELECT count(*) as count FROM thing WHERE type='52';

• to count the users:

openlibrary=# SELECT count(*) as count FROM thing WHERE type='22';

Occasionally, new tables get added to the Open Library database and some existing tables get altered. Scripts are provided to migrate the existing dev instances to the new schema.

To migrate an existing dev instance:

$ python setup.py shell
$ python scripts/migrate_db.py

This will look at the current database schema, identify its version, and upgrade it to the latest version.

• Currently, we use reCAPTCHA v2, which validates users based on the "I'm not a robot" checkbox.

• To develop with reCAPTCHA v2 locally, for testing new user signups and edits that require a user to prove they are human, you will need to sign up for a reCAPTCHA API key pair from Google Developers (Google account required): https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/docs/display

• On the Manage your reCAPTCHA v2 API keys page under Register a new site enter the following values:

• All reCAPTCHA v2 API keys work for local testing, so you do not need to enter the actual OpenLibrary domain. For example, 0.0.0.0 will work for the purpose of local development:

• Once you have generated the keys, add them to your local conf/openlibrary.yml file by filling in the public and private keys under the plugin_recaptcha section.

• From within the Docker container, restart the Open Library service via sudo systemctl restart ol-web. You can simply run docker compose restart as well for the same.

The home page is cached by default. To clear the cache of any page in cache run the following command:

docker compose restart memcached

Question: Why do I hit a 404-page on local when the page shows up on openlibrary.org site?

Answer: Check out the answer for this here: https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/1864

Question: What should I do to find the endpoints/files relating to the components I want to contribute to?

Answer: https://dev.openlibrary.org/developers/routes - can be found here

Issue link: For a full description see: https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/1865

Question: What should I do when book covers won't load locally?

Answer: This can be resolved by going to conf/openlibrary.yml and changing coverstore_url to https://covers.openlibrary.org

Issue link: For a full description see: https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/1897

And special thanks

• rajbot
• gdamdam
• anandology
• bfalling
• mekarpeles
• salman-bhai