Google Books API and Implementation

Google Books API is one of the most useful APIs for searching a large variety of books based on genre, author, subject, and many other parameters. Like other Google APIs, this API also uses OAuth2.0 for authorization and authentication of API requests. Therefore, to use this API you first need to request an API Key from your Google API dashboard by following the steps shown below:

Step-by-step guide for getting a new Google Books API key

Once you get your API Key, you can fetch requests by making a call with the base URL (“https://www.googleapis.com/books/v1/volumes”), your search parameters (e.g. “q=flowers+inauthor:daniel-keyes”), and your API Key (“&key=yourAPIKey”). For example, making a GET request with the following URL will return all the Daniel Keyes books containing “Flowers” in their text.

https://www.googleapis.com/books/v1/volumes?q=flowers+inauthor:daniel-keyes&key=yourAPIKey

The response from Google Books API is a JSON object that contains information relevant to the books returned with the specific request.

Example JSON response from the Google Books API

It is also possible to make fetch requests directly from JavaScript as shown in the following code snippet which picks books based on the genre selected by the user from an HTML dropdown menu:

JavaScript code snippet to get books from Google Books API by genre

HTML code snippet for the genre selection dropdown menu

As a result of calling the getBooksByGenre() function, Google Books API will return a JSON object with the newest (“&orderBy=newest”) 40 books (“&maxResults=40”) from the specific genre (e.g. “q=subject:Adventure”) by omitting print types other than books (“&printType=books”) as shown below.

Example of JSON object returned as a response by the Google Books API

As illustrated above Google Books API can be easily integrated into the user's website with a few lines of code. This API is offered free of charge by Google and leverages the vast Google Books database of more than 40 million books and other titles like magazines. Besides showing the details like the author, genre, book cover image, average rating, and page count, this powerful API can also direct the user to the Google Books link of the preview of a specific title ( in .epub format) if it is available in the Google Books database.

Example of Google Books preview link

If you would like to learn more about the detailed usage of the Google Books API please refer to the official guide published by Google.