Book Series: Ability to add series by its OLID

[zorae]

Problem

When adding a book series (see #6718 ), I can only search for an existing series using its name. It should also be possible to search for series using their ID (e.g. OL327669L) or link (e.g. https://openlibrary.org/series/OL327669L/Bright_Falls).

Reproducing the bug

No response

Context

• Browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc): Safari
• OS (Windows, Mac, etc): iPadOS 26.4
• Logged in (Y/N): Y
• Environment (prod, dev, local): prod

Breakdown

Implementation Details (for maintainers)

Requirements Checklist

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[sdass1918]

Hi, I looked into this issue and it seems the series selector currently only searches by series name.

One possible approach could be to detect whether the input matches an Open Library series identifier (e.g. OL327669L) or a series URL (/series/OL327669L/...). If so, we could extract the ID and directly fetch the series via /series/{ID}.json, otherwise fall back to the existing name search. I have written a pseudo approach that we can take to solve this problem below.

function handleSeriesInput(query) {
    const idPattern = /^OL\d+L$/;
    const urlPattern = /series\/(OL\d+L)/;

    let seriesID = null;

    if (idPattern.test(query)) {
        seriesID = query;
    }

    const match = query.match(urlPattern);
    if (match) {
        seriesID = match[1];
    }

    if (seriesID) {
        return fetch(`/series/${seriesID}.json`)
            .then(res => res.json())
            .then(data => addSeriesToBook(data));
    }

    return searchSeriesByName(query);
}

This would allow users to paste either the ID or the full series URL when adding a series. I’d be happy to help implement this if this approach makes sense.

[Saad259]

I spent some time digging into this. The series_autocomplete endpoint in plugins/worksearch/autocomplete.py does detect the OL ID correctly from both bare IDs and full URLs, but then calls olid_to_key() which maps the L suffix to /lists/ instead of /series/. So it ends up querying Solr for /lists/OL327669L which returns nothing. Confirmed this by hitting openlibrary.org/series/_autocomplete?q=OL327669L directly and getting an empty result.

The fix would be to override db_fetch in series_autocomplete to construct the key with /series/ directly rather than relying on olid_to_key, and handle the same for the Solr query path. Changing olid_to_key globally would not be safe since lists share the same L suffix.

I'd be happy to open a PR if this is available. Just wanted to share my investigation first. @cdrini

[sdass1918]

Thanks for the detailed investigation — I tried reproducing and testing this locally and can confirm the behaviour you described.

From looking into plugins/worksearch/autocomplete.py, the endpoint does correctly detect an embedded OLID using:

embedded_olid = find_olid_in_string(q, self.olid_suffix)

However, when the OLID ends with L, the code calls olid_to_key() which maps it to /lists/{OLID}. Since series records actually live under /series/{OLID}, the Solr query ends up searching for a non-existent key.

I tested a local modification where the key is constructed explicitly as /series/{OLID} instead of relying on olid_to_key().

After making this change, I can see the request correctly querying:

But before

If this approach looks reasonable to maintainers, I’d be happy to help implement the change and open a PR.

[Saad259]

Worth noting that the fix still requires tests covering both the bare ID and full URL lookup cases for series_autocomplete, which are not currently in the test suite. Building on my original investigation, my fix handles both the db_fetch and direct_get overrides along with the missing tests. All verified locally. Would love to open a PR!

[cdrini]

Great catch @Saad259 , it's the olid_to_key function that's causing trouble. Let's add a method to the superclass called olid_to_key, and call self.olid_to_key when its invoked. Then, the series autocomplete class can override this to return the /series/ prefix if the key ends in an L. That should hopefully make this a small, maybe 5 line change.

Seeing as you both commented at about the same time, assigning to you @Saad259 since your proposal is close to the fix we're looking for. But thank you for investigating @sdass1918 ! And please take a look at good first issues or some triaged recent issues to contribute.