Quote:
Originally Posted by davidfor
Sorry, I took it as a report of a change of behaviour especially coming just after a release was made.
Looking at the code, I was wrong about where the year came from. It is from near the top of the page which only date that seems to always be there. There are dates in the affiliates section, but, they appear to be for the edition that is linked to. There are also dates in the editions section, but, which do you use. For example, https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/d...gley/enemy.htm was published in 1977, but there is an edition that is supposedly from 1901.
I am already getting the publisher and ISBN from the first edition listed. I probably should use the published date from that. But, I might try looking for the oldest edition with the same year as the published year. That looks like it will work for recent books, but, a lot of older books, such as https://www.fantasticfiction.com/d/g...son/dorsai.htm, don't have the original editions. In that case, just the year is best.
I don't know when I'll do this. It usually happens when I'm bored or trying not to do something else. |
As you said, for most of the newer books, the month is the same for all of the editions so there isn't a problem. When they differ, I initially used the hard cover date. I have changed to the Kindle date figuring that it is the version that I have. I don't know if the order of the API listing is the same as the order shown on the Fantastic Fiction web page where hard cover appears first, but using the same info as you use for the publisher and ISBN seems reasonable.